



%f:' / \ -- 







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-^..^'' 'W^'^^' 



THE LAND WE LIVE IN 



OR 



The Story of Our Country 




By/ 

HENRY MANN 

Author of " Handbook for American Citizens," etc. 



PUBLISHED BY U 

THE CHRISTIJ^IN- HERJ^LD, 

Louis Klopsch, Proprietor, 
BIBLE HOUSE. NEW YORK. 



1«^ 



0'& 






Copyright, 1896, 
By Louis Klopsch. 



WVv4 



INTRODUCTION. 

"The Story of Our Country" has been often 
told, but cannot be told too often. I have spared 
no effort to make the following pages interesting 
as well as truthful, and to present, in graphic 
language, a pen-picture of our nation's origin 
and progress. It is a story of events, and not a 
dry chronicle of official succession. It is an at- 
tempt to give some fresh color to facts that are 
well known, while depicting also other facts of 
public interest which have never appeared in any 
general history. Wherever I have taken the work 
of another I give credit therefor ; otherwise this 
little book is the fruit of original research and 
thought. The views expressed will doubtless not 
please everybody, and some may think that I go 
too far in pleading the cause of the original 
natives of the soil. Historic justice demands 
that some one should tell the truth about the In- 
dians, whose chief and almost only fault has been 
that they occupied lands which the white man 
wanted. Even now coveious eyes are cast upon 
the territory reserved for the use of the remain- 
ing tribes. 

For such statements in regard to General Jack- 
son at New Orleans as diner from the ordinary 
narrative I am indebted to a work never pub- 
lished, so far as I am aware, in this country or 
in the English language — Vincent Nolte's "Fifty 
Years in Both Hemispheres," issued in Hamburg 
in 1853. As Nolte owned the cotton which Jack- 
son appropriated, and also served as a volunteer 
in the battle of New Orleans, he ought to be good 
authority. 

In dealing with the late war I have sought to be 
just to both the Union and the Confederacy. 

(3) 



4 Introduction. 

The lapse of over thirty years has given a more 
accurate perspective to the events of that mighty 
struggle, in which, as a soldier-boy of sixteen, I 
was an obscure participant, and all true Ameri- 
cans, whether they wore the blue or gray, now 
look back with pride to the splendid valor and 
heroic endurance displayed by the combatants on 
both sides. Those who belittle the constancy 
and courage of the South belittle the sacrifices 
and successes of the North. 

The slavery conflict has long been over, and 
the scars it left are disappearing. Other and mo- 
mentous problems have arisen for settlement, but 
there is every reason for confidence that they will 
be settled at the ballot-box, and without appeal 
to rebellion, or thought or threat of secession. 
In the present generation, more than in any pre- 
ceding, is the injunction of Washington exem- 
plified, that the name of America7i should always 
exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any 
appellation derived from local discriminations. 
This supreme National sentiment overpowering 
all considerations of local interest and attach- 
ment, is the assurance that our country will live 
forever, that all difficulties, however menacing, 
will yield to the challenge of popular intelligence 
and patriotism, and that the glorious record of 
the past is but the morning ray of our National 
greatness to come. 

Henry Mann. 



CONTENTS. 

FIRST PERIOD. 
The Foothold. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE. 

A Land Without a History — Origin of the 
American Indians — Their Semi-civilization 
— The Spanish Colonial System — The King 
Was Absolute Master — The Council of the 
Indies — The Hierarchy — Servitude of the 
Natives — Gold and Silver Mines — Spanish 
Wealth and Degeneracy — Commercial Mo- 
nopoly — Pernicious Effects of Spain's 
Colonial Policy — Spaniards Destroy a Hu- 
guenot Colony, 21 

CHAPTER II. 

Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh — 
English Expedition to North Carolina — 
Failure of Attempts to Settle There— Vir- 
ginia Dare — The Lost Colony — The Foun- 
dation of Jamestown — Captain John Smith 
— His Life Saved by Pocahontas — Rolfe 
Marries the Indian Princess — A Key to 
Early Colonial History — Women Imported 
to Virginia, 32 

CHAPTER III. 

The French in Canada — Champlain Attacks 
the Iroquois — Quebec a Military Post — 
Weak Efforts at Colonization — Fur-traders 
and Missionaries— The Foundation of New 
France — The French King Claims from 

(5) 



6 Contents. 

PAGE. 

the Upper Lakes to the Sea — Slow Growth 
of the French Colonies — Mixing With the 
Savages — The ' ' Coureurs de Bois, " . . . . 41 

CHAPTER IV. 

Henry Hudson's Discovery — Block Winters 
on Manhattan Island — The Dutch Take 
Possession — The Iroquois Friendly — Immi- 
gration of the Walloons — Charter of Privi- 
leges and Exemptions — Patroons — Manu- 
factures Forbidden — Slave Labor Introduced 
— New Sweden — New Netherlanders Want a 
Voice in the Government, ........ 46 

CHAPTER V. 

Landing of the Pilgrims — Their Abiding 
Faith in God's Goodness — The Agreement 
Signed on the Mayflower — A Winter of 
Hardship — The Indians Help the Settlers — 
Improved Conditions — The Colony Buys Its 
Freedom — Priscilla and John Alden — Their 
Romantic Courtship and Marriage, .... 52 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Puritan Immigration — Wealth and Learn- 
ing Seek These Shores — Charter Restrictions 
Dead Letters — A Stubborn Struggle for Self- 
government — Methods of Election — ^The 
Early Government an Oligarchy — The Char- 
ter of 1691 — New Hampshire and Maine — 
The New Haven Theocracy — Hartford's 
Constitution— The United Colonies— The 
Clergy and Politics — Every Election Ser- 
mon a Declaration of Independence, ... 57 

CHAPTER VII. 

Where Conscience Was Free — Roger Williams 
and His Providence Colony — Driven by 



Contents. 7 

PAGE. 

Persecution from Massachusetts — Savages 
Receive Him Kindly — Coddington's Settle- 
ment in Rhode Island — Oliver Cromwell 
and Charles II. Grant Charters — Peculiar 
Referendum in Early Rhode Island, ... 64 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Puritans and Education — Provision for Pub- 
lic Schools — Puritan Sincerity — Effect of 
Intolerance on the Community — Quakers 
Harshly Persecuted — The Salem Witch- 
craft Tragedy — History of the Delusion — 
Rebecca Nourse and Other Victims — The 
People Come to their Senses — Cotton Mather 
Obdurate to the Last — Puritan Morals — 
Comer's Diary — Rhode Island in Colonial 
Times, 68 

CHAPTER IX. 

New England Prospering — Outbreak of King 
Philip's War — Causes of the War — White or 
Indian Had to Go — Philip on the War- 
path — Settlements Laid in Ashes — The At- 
tack on Hadley — The Great Swamp Fight — 
Philip Renews the War More Fiercely Than 
Before — His Allies Desert Him — Betrayed 
and Killed — The Indians Crushed in New 
England, 77 

CHAPTER X. 

Growth of New Netherland — Governor Stuy- 
vesant's Despotic Rule — His Comments 
on Popular Election — New Amsterdam Be- 
comes New York — The Planting of Mary- 
land — Partial Freedom of Conscience — Civil 
War in Maryland — The Carolinas — Settle- 
ment of North and South Carolina — The 
Bacon Rebellion in Virginia — Governor 
Berkeley's Vengeance, 82 



Contents. 



CHAPTER XI. 



The Colony of New York — New Jersey Given 
Away to Favorites — Charter of Liberties 
and Franchises — The Dongan Charter — Be- 
ginnings of New York City Government — 
King James Driven From Power — Leisler 
Ivcads a Popular Movement — The Aristo- 
cratic Element Gains the Upper Hand — 
Jacob Leisler and Milborne Executed — 
Struggle For Liberty Continues, 90 

CHAPTER XII. 

William Penn's Model Colony — Sketch of the 
Founder of Pennsylvania — Comparative Hu- 
manity of Quaker Laws — Modified Freedom 
of Religion — An Early Liquor Law — Of- 
fences Against Morality Severely Pun- 
ished — White Servitude — Debtors Sold Into 
Bondage — Georgia Founded as an Asylum 
for Debtors — Oglethorpe Repulses the Span- 
iards — Georgia a Royal Province, .... 95 



SECOND PERIOD. 

The Struggle For Empire. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Struggle for Empire in North America — The 
Vast Region Called Louisiana — War 
Between England and France — New England 
Militia Besiege Quebec — Frontenac Strikes 
the Iroquois — ^The Capture of Louisburg — 
The Forks of the Ohio — George Washing- 
ton's Mission to the French — Braddock's 
Defeat — Washington Prevents Utter Disas- 
ter — Barbarous Treatment of Prisoners, . . 103 



Contetits. 9 

CHAPTER XIV. 

PAGE. 

Expulsion of the Acadians — A Cruel Deporta- 
tion — The Marquis De Montcalm — The Fort 
William Henry Massacre — Defeat of Aber- 
crombie — William Pitt Prosecutes the War 
Vigorously — Fort Duquesne Reduced — 
Ivouisburg Again Captured — Wolfe Attacks 
Quebec — Battle of the Plains of Abraham — 
Wolfe and Montcalm Mortally Wounded — 
Quebec Surrenders — New France a Dream 
of the Past— Pontiac's War, io8 



THIRD PERIOD. 

The Revolution. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Causes of the Revolution — The Act of Navi- 
gation — Acts of Trade — Odious Customs 
Laws — English Jealousy of New England — 
Effect of Restrictions on Colonial Trade — 
Du Chatelet Foresees Rebellion and Inde- 
pendence — The Revolution a Struggle for 
More Than Political Freedom, 115 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Writs of Assistance Issued — Excitement in 
Boston — The Stamp Act — Protests against 
Taxation Without Representation — Massa- 
chusetts Appoints a Committee of Corre- 
spondence — Samuel Adams and Patrick 
Henry — Henry's Celebrated Resolutions — 
His Warning to King George — Growing 
Agitation in the Colonies — The Stamp Act 
Repealed — Parliament Levies Duties on Tea 
and Other Imports to America — Lord 



lo Contents. 

PAGE. 

North's Choice of Infamy — Measures of 
Resistance in America — The Massachusetts 
Circular Letter — British Troops in Boston — 
The Boston Massacre — Burning of the 
Gaspee — North Carolina ' ' Regulators' ' — 
The Boston Tea Party— The Boston Port 
Bill— The First Continental Congress— A 
Declaration of Rights — ' ' Give Me Liberty, 
or Give Me Death!" 122 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Battle of Lexington — The War of the 
Revolution Begun — Fort Ticonderoga 
Taken — Second Continental Congress — 
George Washington Appointed Commander- 
in-Chief— Battle of Bunker Hill— Last Ap- 
peal to King George — The King Hires 
Hessian Mercenaries — The Americans In- 
vade Canada — General Montgomery Killed 
— General Howe Evacuates Boston — North 
Carolina Tories Routed at Moore's Creek 
Bridge — The Declaration of Independence — 
The British Move on New York— Battle at 
Brooklyn — Howe Occupies New York City 
— General Charles Lee Fails to Support 
Washington — Lee Captured — Washington 's 
Victory at Trenton — The Marquis De La- 
fayette Arrives, 133 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Sir John Burgoyne's Campaign — His Bom- 
bastic Proclamation — The Tragic Story of 
Jane McCrea — Her Name a Rallying Cry — 
Washington Prevents Howe From Aiding 
Burgoyne — The Battle of Brandywine — 
Burgoyne Routed at Saratoga — He Sur- 
renders, With All His Army — Articles of 
Confederation Submitted to the Several 
States — Effect of t!:e Surrender of Burgoyne 



Contents. ir 

PAGE, 

— Franklin the Washington of Diplomacy — 
Attitude of France — France Concludes to 
Assist the United States — Treaties of Com- 
merce and Alliance — King George Prepares 
for War with France — The Winter at 
Valley Forge — Conspiracy to Depose Wash- 
ington Defeated — General Howe Superseded 
by Sir Henry Clinton— The Battle of Mon- 
mouth — General Charles Lee's Treachery — 
Awful Massacre of Settlers in the Wyoming 
Valley — General Sullivan Defeats the Six 
Nations — Brilliant Campaign of George 
Rogers Clark — Failure of the Attempt to 
Drive the British from Rhode Island, . . 143 

CHAPTER XIX. 

The British Move Upon the South— Spain 
Accedes to the Alliance Against England — 
Secret Convention Between France and 
Spain — Capture of Stony Point — John Paul 
Jones — The Bon Homme Richard and the 
Serapis — A Thrilling Naval Combat — 
Wretched Condition of American Finances 
— Franklin's Heavy Burden — The Treason 
of Benedict Arnold — Capture of Andre — 
Escape of Arnold — Andre Executed as a 
Spy — Sir Henry Clinton Captures Charles- 
ton, General Lincoln and His Army — Lord 
Cornwallis Left in Command in the South 
— The British Defeat Gates Near Camden, 
South Carolina — General Nathanael Greene 
Conducts a Stubborn Campaign Against 
Cornwallis — The Latter Retreats Into Vir- 
ginia — Siege of Yorktown — Cornwallis Sur- 
renders — ' ' Oh, God ; it is All Over ! " . . 155 



12 Contents. 

FOURTH PERIOD. 
Union. 

CHAPTER XX. 

PAGB. 

Condition of the United States at the Close 
of the Revolution — New England Injured 
and New York Benefited Commercially by 
the Struggle — Luxury of City Life — Ameri- 
cans an Agricultural People — The Farmer's 
Home — Difficulty of Traveling — Contrast 
Between North and South — Southern Aris- 
tocracy — Northern Great Families — White 
Servitude — The Western Frontier — Early 
Settlers West of the Mountains — A Hardy 
Population — Disappearance of the Colonial 
French — The Ordinance of 1787 — Flood of 
Emigration Beyond the Ohio, 167 

CHAPTER XXL 

The Spirit of Disunion — Shays' Rebellion — A 
National Government Necessary — Adoption 
of the Constitution — Tariff and Internal 
Revenue — The Whiskey Insurrection — Pres- 
ident Washington Calls Out the Military — 
Insurgents Surrender — "The Dreadful 
Night" — Hamilton's Inquisition, .... 174 



Independence Vindicated. 

CHAPTER XXIL 

Arrogance of France — Americans and Louis 
XVI.— Genet Defies Washington— The Peo- 
ple Support the President — War With the 
Indians — Defeat of St. Clair — Indians State 
Their Case — General Wayne Defeats the 
Savages — Jay's Treaty — Retirement of 
Washington — His Character — His Military 



Contents. 13 

PAGE. 

Genius — ^Washington as a Statesman — His 
Views on Slavery — His Figure in History, 180 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

John Adams President — Jefferson and the 
French Revolution — ^The French Directory 
— Money Demanded From America — "Mil- 
lions for Defence ; Not One Penny for Trib- 
ute" — Naval Warfare with France — Capture 
of The Insurgent — Defeat of The Ven- 
geance — Peace With France — Death of 
Washington — Alien and Sedition Laws — 
Jefferson President — The Louisiana Pur- 
chase — Burr's Alleged Treason — War with 
the Barbary States — England Behind the 
Pirates — Heroic Naval Exploits — Carrjnng 
War Into Africa — Peace With Honor, . . . 191 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

French Decrees and British Orders in Coun- 
cil — Damage to American Commerce — The 
Embargo — Causes of the War of 181 2 — The 
Chesapeake and The Leopard — President 
and Little Belt — War Declared — Mr. Astor's 
Messenger — The Two Navies Compared — 
American Frigate Victories — Constitution 
and Guerriere — United States and Macedo- 
nian — Constitution and Java — American 
Sloop Victories — The Shannon and Chesa- 
peake — "Don't Give Up the Ship!" . . . 200 

CHAPTER XXV. 

The War on Land — Tecumseh's Indian Con- 
federacy — Harrison at Tippecanoe — General 
Hull and General Brock — A Fatal Armistice 
— Surrender of Detroit — English Masters 
of Michigan — General Harrison Takes Com- 
mand in the Northwest — Harrison's Answer 



14 Contents. 

PAGE. 

to Proctor— "He Will Never Have This 
Post Surrendered" — Croghan's Brave De- 
fence — The British Retreat — War on the 
Niagara Frontier — Battle of Queenstown — 
Death of Brock— Colonel Winfield Scott 
and the English Doctrine of Perpetual Alle- 
giance, 209 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Battle of Lake Erie — Master-Commandant 
Oliver Hazard Perry — Building a Fleet — 
Perry on the Lake — A Duel of Long Guns 
— Fearful Slaughter on the Lawrence — 
"Can Any of the Wounded Pull a Rope?" 
— At Close Quarters — Victory in Fifteen 
Minutes — "We Have Met the Enemy and 
They Are Ours" — The Father of Chicago 
Sees the End of the Battle— The British 
Evacuate Detroit — General Harrison's Vic- 
tory at the Thames — Tecumseh Slain — The 
Struggle in the Southwest — Andrew Jackson 
in Command — Battle of Horseshoe Bend — 
The Essex in the Pacific — Defeat and Vic- 
tory on the Ocean — Captain Porter's Brave 
Defence — Burning of Newark — Massacre at 
Fort Niagara — Chippewa and Lundy's Lane 
— Devastation by the British Fleet — British 
Vandalism at Washington — Attempt on 
Baltimore — "The Star Spangled Banner" . 216 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

British Designs on the Southwest — New Or- 
leans as a City of Refuge — The Baratarians 
— The Pirates Reject British Advances — 
General Jackson Storms Pensacola — Captain 
Reid's Splendid Fight at Fayal — Edward 
Livingston Advises Jackson — Cotton Bales 
for Redoubts — The British Invasion — ^Jack- 
son Attacks the British at Villere's — The 



Contents. 15 

PAGE. 

Opposing Armies — General Pakenham At- 
tempts to Carry Jackson's Lines by Storm — 
The British Charge— They are Defeated 
with Frightful Slaughter — Pakenham 
Killed — Last Naval Engagement — The Pres- 
ident-Endymion Fight — Peace — England 
Deserts the Indians as She Had Deserted 
the Tories — Decatur Chastises the Alge- 
rians, 225 



South America Free, 
chapter xxviii. 

England and Spanish America — A Significant 
Declaration — The Key to England's Policy 
in South America — Alexander Hamilton 
and the South Americans — President 
Adams' Grandson a Filibuster — Origin of 
the Revolutions in South America — Colo- 
nial Zeal for Spain — Colonists Driven to 
Fight for Independence — A War of Exter- 
mination — Patriot Leaders — The British 
Assist the Revolutionists — American Cau- 
tion and Reserve — The Monroe Doctrine — 
Why England Championed the Spanish- 
American Republics — A Free Field Desired 
for British Trade— The Holy Alliance— Sec- 
retary Canning and President Monroe — The 
Monroe Declaration Not British, But 
American, 233 



Progress. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

The United States Taking the Lead in Civil- 
ization — Manhood Suffrage and Freedom of 
• Worship — Humane Criminal Laws — Pro- 
gress the Genius of the Nation — A Patriotic 



i6 Contents. 

PAGE. 

Report — State Builders in the Northwest — 
Illinois and the Union — Immigration — Brit- 
ish Jealousy — An English Farmer's 
Opinion of America — Commerce and Manu- 
factures — England Tries to Prevent Skilled 
Artisans From Emigrating — The Beginning 
of Protection — The British Turn on their 
Friends the Algerians — General Jackson 
Invades Florida — Spain Sells Florida to the 
United States 246 

CHAPTER XXX. 

The Missouri Compromise — Erie Canal 
Opened — Political Parties and Great Na- 
tional Issues — President Jackson Crushes 
the United States Bank — South Carolina 
Pronounces the Tariff Law Void — Jackson's 
Energetic Action — A Compromise — Terri- 
tory Reserved for the Indians — The Semi- 
nole War — Osceola's Vengeance — His Cap- 
ture and Death— The Black Hawk War- 
Abraham Lincoln a Volunteer — Texas War 
for Independence — Massacre of the Alamo 
— Mexican Defeat at San Jacinto — The 
Mexican President a Captive — ^Texas Ad- 
mitted to the Union — Oregon — American 
Statesmen Blinded by the Hudson Bay 
Company — Marcus Whitman's Ride — Ore- 
gon Saved to the Union — The ' ' Dorr War, ' ' 253 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

War With Mexico — General Zachary Taylor 
Defeats the Mexicans — Buena Vista — Mexi- 
cans Four to One — "A Little More Grape, 
Captain Bragg!" — Glorious American Vic- 
tory — General Scott's Splendid Campaign 
— A Series of Victories — Cerro Gordo — Con- 
treras — Churubusco — Molino del Rey — Cha- 
pultepec — Stars and Stripes Float in the 



Contents. 17 

PAGE. 

City of Mexico — Generous Treatment of the 
Vanquished — Peace — Cession of Vast Terri- 
tory to the United States — The Gadsden 
Purchase, 264 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

The Union in 1850 — Comparative Population 
of Cities and Rural Districts — Agriculture 
the General Occupation — Commercial and 
Industrial Development — Growth of New 
York and Chicago — The Southern States — 
Importance of the Cotton Crop — Why the 
South Was Sensitive to Anti-SlaveryAgita- 
tion — Manufactures — Religion and Educa- 
tion — ^The Cloud on the Horizon, .... 272 



The Slavery Conflict. 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Aggressiveness of Slavery — The Cotton States 
and Border States — The Fugitive Slave Law 
— Nullified in the North — Negroes Im- 
ported from Africa — The Struggle in 
Kansas — John Brown — Abraham Lincoln 
Pleads for Human Rights — Treason in 
Buchanan's Cabinet — Citizens Stop Guns 
at Pittsburg — Conditions at the Begin- 
ning of the Struggle — Southern Advan- 
tages — The Soldiers of Both Armies Com- 
pared — Conscription in the Confederacy 
— Southern Resources Limited — The North 
at a Disadvantage at First, but Its Re- 
sources Inexhaustible — Conscription in 
the North — Popular Support of the War — 
Unfriendliness of Great Britain and France 
—Why They Did Not Interfere, 277 



l8 Contents. 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

PAGE. 

The Confederate Government Organized — 
Fort Sumter — President Lincoln Calls for 
75,000 Men — Command of the Union Forces 
Offered to Robert E. Lee — Lee Joins the 
Confederacy — Missouri Saved to the Union 
— Battle of Bull Run — Union Successes in the 
West — General Grant Captures Fort Donel-. 
son — ' ' I Have No Terms But Unconditional 
Surrender" — The Monitor and Merrimac 
Fight— Its World-wide Effect— Grant Vic- 
torious at Shiloh — Union Naval Victory Near 
Memphis — That City Captured — General 
McClellan's Tactics — He Retreats from Vic- 
tory at Malvern Hill — Second Bull Run 
Defeat — Great Battle of Antietam — Lee Re- 
pulsed, but Not Pursued — McClellan Super- 
seded by Burnside — Union Defeat at Fred- 
ericksburg — Union Victories in the West — 
Bragg Defeated by Rosecrans at Stone 
River — ^The Emancipation Proclamation, . 287 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

General Grant Invests Vicksburg — The Confed- 
erate Garrison — Scenes in the Beleaguered 
City — The Surrender — Hooker Defeated at 
Chancellorsville — Death of ' ' Stonewall' ' 
Jackson — General Meade Takes Command 
of the Army of the Potomac — Lee Crosses 
the Potomac— The Battle of Gettysburg — 
The First Two Days— The Third Day- 
Pickett's Charge — A Thrilling Spectacle — 
The Harvest of Death — Lee Defeated — 
General Thomas, "The Rock of Chicka- 
mauga" — "This Position Must Be Held 
Till Night"— General Grant Defeats Bragg 
at Chattanooga — The Decisive Battle of the 
West, 295 



Contents. 19 

CHAPTBR XXXVI. 

PAGB. 

Grant Appointed Lieutenant-General — Takes 
Command in Virginia — Battles of the Wil- 
derness — The Two Armies — Battle of Cedar 
Creek — Sheridan's Ride — He Turns Defeat 
Into Victory — Confederate Disasters on 
Land and Sea— Farragut at Mobile — Last 
Naval Battle of the War — Sherman Enters 
Atlanta — Lincoln ' s Re- election — Sherman ' s 
March to the Sea — Sherman Captures Savan- 
nah — Thomas Defeats Hood at Nashville — 
Fort Fisher Taken — Lee Appointed General- 
in-Chief — Confederate Defeat at Five Forks 
— Lee's Surrender — ^Johnston's Surrender — 
End of the War— The South Prostrate— A 
Resistance Unparalleled in History — The 
Blots on the Confederacy — Cruel Treatment 
of Union Men and Prisoners — Murder of 
Abraham Lincoln — The South Since the 
War, 301 



Thirty Years of Peace, 
chapter xxxvii. 

Reconstruction in the South — The Congress 
and the President — Liberal Republican 
Movement — Nomination, Defeat and Death 
of Greeley — Troops Withdrawn by Presi- 
dent Hayes — Foreign Policy of the Past 
Thirty Years — French Ordered from Mex- 
ico—Last Days of Maximilian — Russian 
America Bought — The Geneva Arbitration 
— Alabama Claims Paid — The Northwest 
Boundary — The Fisheries — Spain and The 
Virginius — The Custer Massacre — United 
States of Brazil Established — President 
Harrison and Chile — Venezuela — American 



20 Contents. 

PAOB. 

Prestige in South America — Hawaii — Bebr- 
ing Sea — Garfield, the Martyr of Civil Ser- 
vice Reform — Labor Troubles — Railway- 
Riots of 1877 and 1894 — Great Calamities — 
The Chicago Fire, Boston Fire, Charleston 
Earthquake, Johnstown Flood, 308 

CHAPTER XXXVni. 

The American Republic the Most Powerful of 
Nations — Military and Naval Strength — 
Railways and Waterways — Industry and 
Art — Manufactures — The New South — For- 
eign and Domestic Commerce — An Age of 
Invention — Americans a Nation of Readers 
— The Clergy — Pulpit and Press — Religion 
and Higher Education — The Currency 
Question — Leading Candidates for the 
Presidency — A Sectional Contest Deplora- 
ble—What Shall the Harvest Be? 322 



The American People, 
chapter xxxix. 

No Classes Here — All Are Workers — Enor- 
mous Growth of Cities — Immigration — 
Civic Misgovernment — The Farming Popu- 
lation — Individuality and Self-reliance — 
Isolation Even in the Grave — The West — 
The South— The Negro— Little Reason to 
Fear for Our Country — American Rever- 
ence for Established Institutions, 327 



The Land We Live In. 



FIRST PERIOD 
The Foothold. 



CHAPTER I. 

A Land Without a History— Origin of the American In- 
dians—Their Semi-civilization— The Spanish Colonial 
System— The King Was Absolute Master— The Council of 
the Indies— The Hierarchy— Servitude of the Natives — 
Gold and Silver Mines — Spanish Wealth and Degeneracy 
—Commercial Monopoly— Pernicious Effects of Spain's 
Colonial Policy— Spaniards Destroy a Huguenot Colony. 

America presented itself as a virgin land to the 
original settlers from Europe. It had no history, 
no memories, no civilization that appealed to Eu- 
ropean traditions or associations. Its inhabitants 
belonged evidently to the human brotherhood, and 
their appearance and language, as well as some of 
their customs, indicated Mongolian kinship and 
Asiatic origin, but in the eyes of their conquerors 
they were as strange as if they had sprung from 
another planet, and the invaders were equally 
strange and marvelous to the natives. To the 
Spanish adventurer the wondrous temples of the 
Aztecs and the Peruvians bore no significance, 
except as they indicated wealth to be won, and rich 
empires waiting to be prey to the superior prowess 
and arms of the Christian aggressor; while the Eng- 
lishman, the Frenchman, Hollander and Swede, 
who planted their colors on more northern soil, 
saw only a region of primeval forests inhabited by 
tribes almost as savage as the wild beasts upon 

(21) 



22 The Land We Live In. 

whom they existed. It is needless, therefore, in 
this pen picture of our country, to go into any 
extended notice of its ancient inhabitants, although 
the writer has devoted not a little independent 
study to their origin and history. That study has 
confirmed him in the opinion that the American 
Indians came from Asia, with such slight admix- 
ture as the winds and waves may have brought 
from Europe, Africa and Polynesia. The resem- 
blance of the American Indians to the Tartar 
tribes in language is striking, and in physical 
appearance still more so, while the difference in 
manners and customs is no greater than that be- 
tween the Englishman of the seventeenth century 
and his descendant in the mountains of West 
Virginia or Kentucky. It is probable — indeed 
what is known of the aborigines indicates, that 
the immigrations were successive, and their suc- 
cession would be fully accounted for by the 
mighty convulsions among Asiatic nations, of 
which history gives us a very dim idea. It is 
easy to suppose that more than one dusky ^neas 
led his fugitive followers across the narrow strait 
which divides Asia from America, and pushed 
on to the warmer regions of the South, driving 
in turn before him less vigorous and warlike 
tribes, seizing the lands which they had made 
fruitful, and adopting in part the civilization 
which they had built up. Many of the con- 
quered would prefer emigration to submission, 
and in their turn push farther south, even to the 
uttermost bound of the continent. 

The writer is not of those who believe that the 
remote inhabitants of America are unrepresented 
among the red men of the present age. In Euro- 
pean and American history the myths about ex- 
terminated races are disappearing in the light 
of investigation. Our ancestors were not so 
cruel as they have been painted. It is not likely 
that any nation was ever cut off to a man. Men 



The Land We Live Ln. 23 

were too valuable to be destroyed beyond the re- 
quirements of warfare or the demands of sanguin- 
ary religious customs. Conquered nations, it is 
now agreed, were usually absorbed by their con- 
querors, either as equals or serfs. In either event 
unity was the result, as in the case of the Romans 
and Latins, the Scots and the Picts, the Normans 
and the Saxons. The mound builders, in all 
probability, survive in the Indian tribes of to- 
day, some of whom in the Southwest were mound 
builders within the historic period, while the 
ruined cities of Arizona and New Mexico were 
the product of a rude civilization, admittedly 
inherited by the pueblos of the present genera- 
tion. 

****** ^- 

There was nothing in the civilization of the 
most advanced American races worth preserving, 
except their monuments. The destruction of the 
Aztec and Peruvian empires was, on the whole, 
an advantage to humanity. The darkest period 
of religious persecution in Europe saw nothing 
to compare with the sanguinary rites of Aztec 
worship, and bigoted, intolerant and oppressive 
as the Spaniards were they did a service to man- 
kind in putting an end to those barbarities. The 
colonial system established by Spain in America 
was founded on the principle that dominion over 
the American provinces was vested in the crown, 
not in the kingdom. The Spanish possessions 
on this continent were regarded as the personal 
property of the sovereign. 

The viceroys were appointed by the king and 
removable by him at pleasure. All grants of lands 
were made by the sovereign, and if they failed 
from any cause they reverted to the crown. All 
political and civil power centred in the king, and 
was executed by such persons and in such man- 
ner as the will of the sovereign might suggest, 
wholly independent not only of the colonies but 



24 The Land We Live In. 

of the Spanish nation. The only civil privileges 
allowed to the colonists were strictly municipal, 
and confined to the regulation of their interior 
police and commerce in cities and towns, for 
which purpose they made their own local regula- 
tions or laws, and appointed town and city 
magistrates. The Spanish- American governments 
were not merely despotic like those of Russia 
and Turkey, but they were a more dangerous 
kind of despotism, as the absolute power of 
the sovereign was not exercised by himself, but 
by deputy. 

At first the dominions of Spain in the new 
world were divided, for purposes of administra- 
tion, into two great divisions or vice-royalties: 
New Spain and Peru, Afterward, as the country 
became more settled, the vice-royalty of Santa Fe 
de Bogota was created. A deputy or vice-king 
was appointed to preside over each of these gov- 
ernments, who was the representative of the sover- 
eign, and possessed all his prerogatives within 
his jurisdiction. His power was as supreme as 
that of the king over every department, civil and 
military. He appointed most of the important 
officers of the vice-royalty. His court was formed 
on the model of Madrid, and displayed an equal 
and often superior degree of magnificence and 
state. He had horse and foot guards, a regular 
household establishment and all the ensigns and 
trappings of royalty. The tribunals which as- 
sisted in the administration were similar to those 
of the parent country. The Spanish- American 
colonies, in brief, possessed no political privi- 
leges ; the authority of the crown was absolute, 
but not more so than in the parent State, and it 
could hardly have been expected that liberties 
denied to the people at home would have been 
granted to subjects in distant America, 

Over the viceroys, and acting for the sovereign, 
was the tribunal called the Council of the Indies, 



The Land We Live In. 25 

established by King Ferdinand in 151 1, and re- 
modeled by Charles V. in 1524. This Council 
possessed general jurisdiction over Spanish-Ameri- 
ca; framed laws and regulations respecting the 
colonies, and made all the appointments for 
America reserved to the crown. All officers, 
from the viceroy to the lowest in rank, could be 
called to account by the Council of the Indies. 
The king was supposed to be always present in 
the Council, and the meetings were held wherever 
the monarch was residing. All appeals from the 
decisions of the Courts of Audience, the highest 
tribunals in America, were made to the Council 
of the Indies. 

The absolute power of the sovereign did not 
stop short at the Church. Pope Julian II. con- 
ferred on King Ferdinand and his successors the 
patronage and disposal of all ecclesiastical bene- 
fices in America, and the administration of 
ecclesiastical revenues — a privilege which the 
crown did not possess in Spain. The bulls of 
the Roman pontiff could not be admitted into 
Spanish America until they had been examined 
and approved by the king and Council of the In- 
dies. The hierarchy was as imposing as in 
Spain, and its dominion and influence greater. 
The archbishops, bishops and other dignitaries 
enjoyed large revenues, and the ecclesiastical 
establishment was splendid and magnificent. 
The Inquisition was introduced in America in 
1570 by Philip II., the oppressor of Protestant 
England and of the Netherlands, and patron of 
the monster Alva. The native Indians, on the 
ground of incapacity, were exempted from the 
jurisdiction of that tribunal. No scruple was 
shown, however, in converting the natives to 
Christianity, and multitudes were baptized who 
were entirely ignorant of the doctrine they pro- 
fessed to embrace. In the course of a few years 
after the reduction of the Mexican empire, more 



26 The Land We Live In. 

than four millions of the Mexicans were nomi- 
nally converted, one missionary baptizing five 
thousand in one day, and stopping only when he 
had become so exhausted as to be unable to lift 
his hands. 

Conversion to Christianity did not save the 
Indians from being reduced to slavery, Colum- 
bus himself, in the year 1499, to avoid the con- 
sequences of a disaffection among his followers, 
granted lands and distributed a certain number 
of Indians among them to cultivate the soil. 
This system was afterward introduced in all the 
Spanish settlements, the Indians being every- 
where seized upon and compelled to work in the 
mines, to till the plantations, to carry burdens 
and to perform all menial and laborious services. 
The stated tasks of the unhappy natives were 
often much beyond their abilities, and multitudes 
sank under the hardships to which they were 
subjected. Their spirit was broken, they became 
humble and degraded, and the race was rapidly 
wasting away. The oppressions and sufferings of 
the natives at length excited the sympathies of 
many humane persons, particularly among the 
clergy, who exerted themselves with much zeal 
and perseverance to ameliorate their condition. 
In 1542 Charles V. abolished the enslavement of 
the Indians, and restored them to the position of 
freemen. This caused great indignation in the 
colonies and in Peru forcible resistance was 
offered to the royal decree. But although re- 
lieved in some degree from the burdens of per- 
sonal slavery, the natives were required, as vas- 
sals of the crown, to pay a personal tax or tribute 
in the form of personal service. They were also 
put under the protection of great landholders, 
who treated them as serfs, although not exacting 
continuous labor, so that during the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries the condition of the Indians 
did not greatly improve. 



The Land We Live In. 27 

Notwithstanding the avidity of the first Span- 
ish adventurers for the precious metals, and the 
ardor with which they pursued their researches, 
their exertions were attended for a number of 
years with but little success. It was not until 
1545 that the rich mines of Potosi, in Peru, were 
accidentally discovered by an Indian in clamber- 
ing up the mountain. This was soon followed 
by the discovery of other highly productive mines 
of gold and silver in the various provinces, and 
Spanish America began to pour a flood of wealth 
into the coffers of Spain. The mines were not 
operated by the crown, but by individual enter- 
prise, the crown receiving a share of the pro- 
ceeds, and alloting a certain number of Indians 
to the mine-owners as laborers. These Indians 
did all the work of the mine without the aid of 
machinery, and with very little assistance from 
horse-power. Their industry enriched Spain 
and her colonies to a degree unexampled in the 
previous experience of mankind. 



Silver and gold, however, did not bring lasting 
prosperity. Already in the early part of the 
seventeenth century Spain showed signs of decay. 
Her manufactures and commerce began to de- 
cline; men could not be recruited to keep up her 
fleets and armies, and even agriculture felt the 
blight of national degeneracy. The great emi- 
gration to the colonies drained off the energetic 
element of the population and the immense 
riches which the colonies showered upon Spain 
intoxicated the people and led them to desert the 
accustomed paths of industry. Nineteen-twen- 
tieths of the commodities exported to the Spanish 
colonies were foreign fabrics, paid for by the 
products of the mines, so that the gold and silver 
no sooner entered Spain than they passed away 
into the hands of foreigners, and the country was 



28 The Land We Live Ln. 

left without sufficient of the precious metals for 
a circulating medium. 

Although wholly unable to supply the wants of 
her colonies Spain did not relax in the smallest 
degree the rigor of her colonial system, the con- 
trolling principle of which was that the whole 
commerce of the colonies should be a monop- 
oly in the hands of the crown. The regulation 
of this commerce was entrusted to the Board of 
Trade, established at Seville. 

This board granted a license to any vessel 
bound to America, and inspected its cargo. The 
entire commerce with the colonies centred in Se- 
ville, and continued there until 1720. It was 
carried on in a uniform manner for more than 
two centuries. A fleet with a strong convoy 
sailed annually for America. The fleet consisted 
of two divisions, one destined for Carthagena 
and Porto Bello, the other for Vera Cruz. At 
those points all the trade and treasure of Spanish 
America from California to the Straits of Magel- 
lan, was concentrated, the products of Peru and 
Chili being conveyed annually by sea to Panama, 
and from thence across the isthmus to Porto 
Bello, part of the way on mules, and part of the 
way down the Chagres river. The storehouses of 
Porto Bello, now a decayed and miserable town, 
retaining no shadow of former greatness, were 
filled with merchandise, and its streets thronged 
with opulent merchants drawn from distant pro- 
vinces. Upon the arrival of the fleet a fair was 
opened, continuing for forty days, during which 
the most extensive commercial transactions took 
place, and the rich cargoes of the galleons were 
all marketed, and the specie and staples of the 
colonies received in payment to be conveyed 
to Spain. The same exchange occurred at 
Vera Cruz, and both squadrons having taken in 
their return cargoes, rendezvoused at Havana, and 
sailed from thence to Europe. Such was the 



The Land We Live In. 29 

stinted, fettered and restricted commerce which 
subsisted between Spain and her possessions in 
America for more than two centuries and a half, 
and such were the swaddling clothes which bound 
the youthful limbs of the Spanish colonies, re- 
tarding their growth and keeping them in a con- 
dition of abject dependence. The effect was most 
injurious to Spain as well as to the colonies. 
The naval superiority of the English and Dutch 
enabled them in time of war to cut off intercourse 
between Spain and America, and thereby deprive 
Spanish- Americans of the necessaries as well as 
the luxuries for which they depended upon 
Spain, and an extensive smuggling trade grew 
up which no efforts on the part of the authorities 
could repress. Monopoly was starved out through 
the very rigor exerted to make it exclusive, and 
the markets were so glutted with contraband 
goods that the galleons could scarcely dispose of 
their cargoes. 

The restrictions upon the domestic intercourse 
and commerce of the Spanish colonies were, if 
possible, more grievous and pernicious in their 
consequences than those upon traffic with Europe. 
Inter-colonial commerce was prohibited under the 
severest penalties, the crown insisting that all trade 
should be carried on through Spain and made 
tributary to the oppressive duties exacted by the 
government. While Spain received a consider- 
able revenue from her colonies, notwithstanding 
the contraband trade, the expenses of the system 
were very great, and absorbed much of the 
revenue. Corruption was widespread, and colo- 
nial officers looked upon their positions chiefly 
with a view to their own enrichment. They 
had no patriotic interest in the welfare of 
the colonies, and conducted themselves like a 
garrison quartered upon the inhabitants. Al- 
though salaries were high the expenses of living 
were great, and the salaries were usually but a 



30 The Land We Live In. 

small part of the income. Viceroys who had 
been in office a few years, went back to Spain 
with princely fortunes. 



Such was the condition of affairs in Spain's 
vast American empire when England, France and 
the United Provinces started on a career of colo- 
nization in North America. It seems to have 
been providential that the same generation which 
witnessed the discovery of America witnessed the 
birth of Luther. In the century which followed 
the Theses of Wittenberg the eyes of sufferers for 
conscience' sake turned eagerly and hopefully 
toward the New World as a refuge from the op- 
pression, the scandal and the persecution of the 
old. The first to seek what is now the Atlantic 
region of the United States with the object of 
making their home here were French Huguenots, 
sent out by the great Admiral Coligny, who after- 
ward fell a victim in the massacre of Barthol- 
omew's Day. The Frenchmen planted a settle- 
ment first at Port Royal, which was abandoned, and 
afterward built a fort about eighteen miles up the 
St. John's River, Florida, and named it Fort 
Caroline. This was in the year 1564. In the 
following year a Spanish fleet, commanded by 
Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, appeared at the 
mouth of the St. John's. In answer to the 
French challenge as to his purpose the Spanish 
commander replied that he came with orders from 
his king to gibbet and behead all the Protestants 
in those regions. "The Frenchman, who is a 
Catholic," he added, "I will spare. Every 
heretic shall die. ' ' The Huguenots, had they 
held together, might have been able to offer a 
successful resistance to the Spaniards, but Jean 
Ribault, the French commander, unfortunately 
decided to sail out from the shelter of Fort Caro- 
line and seek a conflict at sea with the enemy. 



The Land We Live In. 



31 



A storm destroyed the French fleet, but the crews 
succeeded in escaping to land. Menendez 
marched overland with his troops to the unpro- 
tected fort and easily captured it with its handful 
of defenders. The Spaniards cruelly murdered 
almost the entire colony of two hundred men, 
women and children, some of them being hung 
to trees with the inscription: '*Not as French- 
men, but as Lutherans. ' ' 

Ribault, ignorant of the tragedy at the fort, 
sought to return there from the place where he 
had been shipwrecked. His men were divided 
in two detachments. Menendez went in search 
of them, and meeting one party told them that 
Fort Caroline, with its inmates, had been des- 
troyed. The Frenchmen were helpless, and 
pleaded for mercy. Menendez asked: "Are you 
Catholics or Lutherans?" They answered: "We 
are of the reformed religion." The pitiless 
Spaniard replied that he was under orders to ex- 
terminate all of that faith. They offered him 
fifty thousand ducats if he would spare their 
lives. Menendez demanded that the Frenchmen 
should place themselves at his mercy. They con- 
sented to do so. A small stream divided the 
Huguenots from the Spaniards. Menendez 
ordered that the French should cross over in 
companies of ten. As they crossed they were 
taken out of sight of their companions and 
bound with their arms behind them. When all 
of the Frenchmen, about two hundred in num- 
ber, had been thus secured, Menendez again 
asked them: "Are you Catholics or Lutherans?" 
Some twelve professed to be Catholics, and these 
wnth four mechanics who could be made useful 
to the Spaniards, were led away. The remainder 
of the two hundred were put to death, Menendez 
next intercepted Ribault and the remnant of 
his men, and by similar treachery accomplished 
their destruction, refusing an offer of one hundred 



32 The Land We Live In. 

thousand ducats to spare their lives. Men- 
endez wrote to King Phillip that the Huguenots 
* ' were put to the sword, judging this to be ex- 
pedient for the service of God our Lord, and of 
your majesty. ' ' 

Thus ended the first attempt of members of the 
reformed religion to settle within the limits of 
what is now the United States. But the blood of 
the victims did not cry in vain to Heaven for ven- 
geance. A Frenchman, himself a Roman Catholic, 
the Chevalier Dominic de Gourges, determined 
to punish the Spaniards for their cruelty. He 
sold his property to obtain money to fit out an 
expedition to Florida. Arriving in Florida in 
the spring of 1568, he was joined by the natives 
in an attack on two forts occupied by the Span- 
iards below Fort Caroline. The forts were cap- 
tured and their inmates put to the sword, except 
a few whom de Gourges hung to trees with the 
inscription: "Not as Spaniards and mariners, 
but as traitors, robbers and murderers. ' ' 



CHAPTER II. 

Queen KHzabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh— English Expedi- 
tion to North Carolina— Failure of Attempts to Settle 
There — Virginia Dare— The I^ost Colony— The Foundation 
of Jamestown— Captain John Smith— His Life Saved by 
Pocahontas— Rolfe Marries the Indian Princess— A Key to 
Early Colonial History— Women Imported to Virginia. 

The lives of the hapless Huguenots who 
perished at the hands of Menendez were, per- 
haps, not altogether wasted, for it is believed 
that a refugee from the Port Royal colony, 
wrecked on the coast of England, gave Queen 
Elizabeth interesting information about the tem- 
perate and fruitful regions north of the Spanish 
territories and prepared her mind to favor the 
projects of Sir Walter Raleigh. That bold and 



The Land We Live In. 33 

talented adventurer, whose name will live forever 
in American annals, and whose monument is 
North Carolina's beautiful State capital, is said 
in the familiar story to have attracted the notice 
of Queen Elizabeth by spreading his scarlet cloak 
over a miry place for the queen to walk upon. 
He made rapid progress in the good graces of his 
sovereign, who was quick to discern the men who 
could be useful to her and to her kingdom. Sir 
Humphrey Gilbert, half brother to Sir Walter, 
had perished on an expedition to found an Eng- 
lish colony in America. A storm engulfed his 
vessel, the Squirrel, and he went down with all 
his crew. Queen Elizabeth graciously granted to 
Sir Walter a patent as lord proprietor of the 
country from Delaware Bay to the mouth of the 
Santee River, and substantially including the 
present States of Mar^dand, Virginia, North 
Carolina and a large portion of South Carolina, 
with an indefinite extension to the west. 

Raleigh sent out an expedition of two ships 
under the command of Philip Amidas and Arthur 
Barlow. They landed upon the coast of North 
Carolina at mid-summer, in the year 1584. The 
scenery and climate were charming, the natives 
hospitable and everything seemed to promise 
well for future settlement. The adventurers re- 
ported to Raleigh, who decided to plant a colony 
in the region visited by his vessels. Queen 
Elizabeth herself is said to have given the name 
of Virginia to her dominion, to commemorate 
her unmarried condition. Untaught by the ex- 
perience of American colonists from the days of 
Columbus, tlie English settlers in North Carolina 
had the usual quarrel with the natives, and were 
saved from the usual fate only by the timely 
arrival of Sir Francis Drake on his return to 
England from a cruise against the Spaniards. 
The colonists sought refuge on Drake's vessels 
and were carried back to their native country. 



34 The Land We Live Ln. 

Subsequent attempts of Sir Walter Raleigh to es- 
tablish colonies in North Carolina also failed, but 
these efforts were productive of at least one impor- 
tant benefit in introducing to the attention of the 
English and also of the Irish, the potato, which, 
although previously brought to Ireland by a 
slave-trader named Hawkins, and to England by 
.Sir Francis Drake, attracted but little notice be- 
fore it was imported by John White, Raleigh's 
Governor of Roanoke. At Roanoke was born, 
August i8, 1587, the first white child of English 
parentage on the North American continent, Vir- 
ginia Dare, the daughter of William and Eleanor 
Dare, and granddaughter of Governor White. 

In the little wooden chapel, two or three weeks 
after the event, the colonists assembled one bright 
day to attend the baptism and christening of the 
little stranger. The font was the family's silver 
wash ewer, and the sponsor was Governor White 
himself, the baby's grandfather. Thereafter she 
was known as Virginia Dare, a sweet and appro- 
priate name for this pretty little wild flower that 
iDloomed all alone on that desolate coast. About 
the time that Virginia was cutting her first teeth 
there came very distressing times to the colony. 
There was great need of supplies, and it was de- 
termined to send to England for them. Gov- 
ernor White went himself, and never saw his 
little granddaughter again. 

It was three years before the Governor returned 
to Roanoke Island. He was kept in England by 
the Spanish invasion, and after the winds and the 
waves had shattered the dreaded Armada, it was 
some time before Raleigh could get together the 
men and supplies that were needed by the far-off 
colony. At last the ship was ready and White 
took his departure, but he had not sailed far 
when his vessel was overtaken by a Spanish 
cruiser and captured. White himself escaped in 
a boat, and after many days reached England 



The Latid We Live In. 35 

again. Then he had to wait for another ship, 
and the weary old man saw day after day go by 
before he left the chalk cliffs of England behind 
him. After long, anxious months he approached 
the new land. It was near sunset and he ex- 
pected to see the smoke rising from the chimneys 
and the settlers hurrying in from the fields to eat 
their evening meal, or crowding down to greet the 
long-looked for arrivals. But no such cheering 
sight met his gaze. There stood the cabins, but 
they were deserted; not a single human soul was 
visible. They landed and walked up the grass- 
grown paths. Vines and climbers festooned the 
doorways. A dreary stillness reigned everywhere. 
The colony had disappeared, and tradition has it 
to this day that the settlers were absorbed in the 
Indian tribes and that little Virginia Dare may 
have become a white Pocahontas. 

Raleigh lost his best friend when Queen Eliza- 
beth died, and her successor, James, gave into 
other hands the task of establishing English 
power in America. The London Company, with 
a patent from the king, sent a fleet of three 
vessels to Virginia, which ascended the James 
River, and fifty miles from its mouth laid the 
foundation of Jamestown, May 13, 1607. 



It was a lovely day in summer, presenting a 
bright southern contrast to the bitter winter 
weather which welcomed the Pilgrims thirteen 
years later to Plymouth Rock, when the English- 
men began the erection of a fort on the peninsula 
or island in the river, where they proposed to 
establish the capital of their colony. They chose 
for their president Edward Maria Wingfield, 
ignoring Captain John Smith, a gallant and re- 
sourceful soldier of fortune who would have been 
invaluable as a leader against any foe. The fort 
had not been completed when the Indians 



36 The Land We Live In. 

gathered in large numbers and made a desperate 
attack on the colony. Twelve of the colonists 
were killed and wounded before the savages were 
driven off by the use of artillery. In the following 
winter Captain John Smith explored the waters in 
the vicinity of Jamestowni in search of a passage 
to the Pacific. This may seem ridiculous in the 
light of present knowledge, but it is to be re- 
membered that two years later, in 1609, the great 
navigator, Henry Hudson, ascended the river 
which bears his name, in the expectation of dis- 
covering a northwest passage to the Orient. 
Kven the most enlightened nations of Europe 
were slow to give up the idea that a connection 
by water existed through the American continent, 
between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. 

To return to Captain John Smith. It appears 
that in the course of his explorations he was 
captured by Indians, and taken before Chief 
Powhatan at his forest home. As Smith tells the 
story, the chief wore a mantle of raccoon skins 
and a head-dress of eagle's feathers. The war- 
riors, about two hundred in number, were ranged 
on each side of Powhatan, and the Indian women 
were assembled behind the warriors to witness 
the unwonted scene. Two daughters of the chief, 
or, as the English called him, the "emperor," 
had seats near his "throne." Smith was well 
received, one woman bringing him water to wash 
his hands, and another a bunch of feathers to dry 
them with. Then he was fed, and the council 
deliberated as to his fate. They resolved that he 
should die. Two large stones were placed in 
front of Powhatan and Smith was pinioned, 
dragged to the stones, and his head placed upon 
them, while the warriors who were to carry out 
the sentence brandished their clubs for the fatal 
blow. One of the daughters of Powhatan, named 
Matoa, or Pocahontas, sixteen or eighteen years 
old, sprang from her father's side, clasped Smith 



The Land We Live In. 37 

in her arms, and laid her head upon his. Pow- 
hatan, savage as he was, and full of anger against 
the English, melted at the sight. He ordered 
that the prisoner should be released, and sent 
him with a message of friendship to Jamestown. 

Pocahontas continued to be a friend to the 
white man. Learning, two years later, of an 
Indian plot to exterminate the intruders, she 
sped stealthily from her father's home to the 
English settlement, warned Captain Smith of the 
impending peril, and was back in Powhatan's 
cabin before morning. The English were not 
ungrateful for her goodness, even although it 
appears she was unable to prevent her father from 
giving expression at times to his hatred of the 
colonists. On one occasion, when the settlers 
were suffering from scarcity of food, and Pow- 
hatan would not permit his people to carry corn 
to Jamestown, an Englishman named Samuel 
Argall went on a foraging expedition near the 
home of Powhatan, and enticed Pocahontas on 
board his vessel. He held the 3^oung woman as 
a prisoner, and offered to release her for a large 
ransom in corn. Powhatan refused to have any- 
thing to do with Argall, but sent word to James- 
town saying that if his daughter should be 
returned to him he would treat the English as 
friends. Pocahontas was detained at Jamestown 
for several months, being treated with respect, 
and having the free run of the colony. She ap- 
pears to have been a romping, good-natured 
young woman, comely for an Indian, passing 
her time as happily as possible, without moping 
for her kinspeople, and not at all the typical hero- 
ine of song and story. It was wicked to detain 
her, but she seemed to enjoy her captivity and 
frolicked about the place in a way that must have 
shocked those who regarded her as of royal birth. 
Evidently Pocahontas liked the English from the 
first, and preferred their company at Jamestown 



38 The Land We Live Ln. 

to her childhood home in the Virginia forests. 
A young Englishman, named John Rolfe, fell in 
love with her. Wives from England were scarce, 
and this fact ma}* have made Pocahontas more 
attractive in his eyes. When some one objected 
that she was a pagan — "Is it not my duty," he 
replied, "to lead the blind to the light?" Poca- 
hontas learned to love Rolfe in return, and love 
made easy her path to conversion to Christianity. 
She was baptized by the name of Rebecca, and 
was the first Christian convert in Virginia. Pow- 
hatan consented to his daughter's marriage — he 
had probably concluded by this that she was 
bound to be English anyhow — and the ceremony 
was performed in the chapel at Jamestown, on a 
•delightful spring day in April, 1613. Poca- 
hontas, we are told, was dressed in a simple 
tunic of white muslin from the looms of Dacca. 
Her arms were bare even to her shoulders, and 
hanging loosely to her feet was a robe of rich 
stuff presented by the Governor, Sir Thomas 
Dale, and fancifully embroidered by Pocahontas 
and her maidens. A gaudy fillet encircled her 
head, and held the plumage of birds and a veil 
•of gauze, while her wrists and ankles w^ere 
adorned with the simple jewelry of the native 
workshops. When the ceremony was ended, the 
•eucharist was administered, with bread from the 
wheat fields around Jamestown, and wine from the 
grapes of the adjacent woodland. Her brothers 
and sisters and forest maidens were present ; also 
the Governor and Council, and five English 
women — all that there were in the colony — who 
afterward returned to England. Rolfe and his 
spouse ' ' lived civilly and lovingly together' ' until 
Governor Dale went back to England in 1616, 
when they and the Englishwomen in Virginia 
accompanied the Governor. The ' ' Lady Rebecca' ' 
received great attentions at court and from all 
below it. She was entertained by the Lord Bishop 



The Land We Live In. 39 

of London, and at court she was treated with the 
respect due to the daughter of a monarch. The 
silly King James was angry because one of his 
subjects dared marry a lady of royal blood! And 
Captain Smith, for fear of displeasing the royal 
bigot, would not allow her to call him "father," 
as she desired to do, and her loving heart was 
grieved. The king, in his absurd dreams of the 
divinity of the royal prerogative, imagined Rolfe 
or his descendants might claim the crown of 
Virginia on behalf of his royal wife, and he 
asked the Privy Council if the husband had not 
committed treason ! * Pocahontas remained in 
England about a year; and when, with her hus- 
band and son she was about to return to Virginia, 
with her father's chief councillor, she was seized 
with small-pox at Gravesend, and died in June, 
1617. Her remains lie within the parish church- 
yard at Gravesend. Her son, Thomas Rolfe, 
afterward became a distinguished man in Vir- 
ginia, and his descendants are found among the 
most honorable citizens of that commonwealth. 

Between the lines of the story of Pocahontas 
can be found the key to much of the early history 
of Virginia and other colonies. Even before 
regular settlements were attempted on these 
shores the Indians had learned by bitter experi- 
ence to dread and hate the strangers in the big 
canoes. Slave-traders and adventurers made prey 
of the natives, and many a depredating visit was 
doubtless paid to America that is not recorded in 
the annals of those times. Argall's abduction of 
Pocahontas ended fortunately, but it might have 
brought on a terrible Indian war and the destruc- 
tion of the Vircrinia colony. Had such been the 
result the civilized world would never have 
known the red man's side of the story, and Pow- 
hatan's just vengeance would have been set down 
to the barbarous and savage nature of the Indian. 

* Lossing. 



40 



The Laud M'c Li-'c Fn. 



The scarcity of women iu the Virginia colony- 
has already been alluded to in connection with 
the marriage of Rolfe and Pocahontas. Of the 
early immigrants very few were women, and there 
could be no permanent colony without the home 
and family. The London Company, at the in- 
stance of their treasurer, Edwin Sandys, pro- 
posed, about twelve years after the first settle- 
ment, to send one hundred "pure and uncorrupt" 
young women to Virginia at the expense of the 
corporation, to be wives to the planters. Ninety 
were sent over in 1620. The shores were lined 
with young men waiting to see them land, and 
in a few days everyone of the fair immigrants 
had found a husband. Wives had to be paid for 
in tobacco — the currency of the colony — in order 
to recompense the company for the expense of 
importing them. The price of a wife was at first 
fixed at one hundred and twenty-five pounds of 
tobacco — equal to about ^90 — but afterward rose 
to $150. The women were disposed of on credit, 
when the suitor had not the cash, and the debt 
incurred for a wife was considered a debt of 
honor. Virginia became a colony of homes. 
The settlement was saved from becoming a refuge 
of the criminal and the outcast, and in the 
unions formed at that time many of the families 
in the country had their origin. That some of 
the refuse of English society floated into the 
colony is true, and many of the unruly children 
of London and other English towns, were sent 
there as apprentices. But the unruly street boy 
often has the diamond of energy and genius con- 
cealed within the rude exterior, and in the genial 
clime of Virginia, with an opportunity to be a 
pian among men, the young apprentice from the 
slums of London or Plymouth proved himself to 
possess qualities of value to the community. 



The Land We Live In. 41 



CHAPTER III. 

The French in Canada— Champlain Attacks the Iroquois — 
Quebec a Military Post— Weak Efforts at Colonization— 
Fur-traders and Missionaries— The Foundation of New 
France— The French King Claims from the Upper I^akes 
to the Sea— Slow Growth of the French Colonies— Mixing 
with the Savages— The " Coureurs de Bois." 

Although the French navigator, Jacques Cartier, 
had sailed up the St. Lawrence as early as 1534, 
it was not until 1608 — the year after the founda- 
tion of Jamestown — that Samuel de Champlain 
effected a permanent settlement at Quebec. It 
happened that the Indians of the St. Lawrence 
region were at bitter enmity with the Iroquois, 
or Five Nations, who lived in the present State 
of New York, and this enmity had no small in- 
fluence in deciding the subsequent duel between 
France and England for empire in North America. 
Champlain accepted the St. Lawrence Indians as 
allies, and consented to lead a war party against 
the Iroquois. In 1609, the year after the settle- 
ment of Quebec, Champlain entered the lake 
which bears his name, accompanied by a number 
of the St. Lawrence Indians, and engaged the 
Iroquois in battle. The warriors of the Five 
Nations were brave, but the white man's gun was 
too much for them, and when two of their chiefs 
fell dead, pierced by a shot from Champlain's 
weapon, they turned and fled. The French thus 
won the friendship of the Canadian Indians and 
the undying hatred of the Five Nations, and the 
latter therefore stood faithfully by first the Dutch, 
and later the English in the establishment of 
their power at Manhattan. 

Quebec continued for many years to be hardly 
more than a military post. At the time of 
Champlain's death, in 1635, there was, says 
Wiusor, a fortress with a few small guns on the 



42 The Land We Live In. 

cliffs of Cape Diamond. Along the foot of the 
precipice was a row of unsightly and unsub- 
stantial buildings, where the scant population 
lived, carried on their few handicrafts, and stored 
their winter provisions. It was a motley crowd 
which, in the dreary days, sheltered itself here 
from the cold blasts that blew along the river 
channel. There was the military officer, who 
sought to give some color to the scene in showing 
as much of his brilliant garb as the cloak which 
shielded him from the wind would permit. The 
priest went from house to house with his looped 
hat. The lounging hunter preferred for the most 
part to tell his story within doors. Occasionally 
you could mark a stray savage who had come to 
the settlement for food. Such characters as these, 
and the lazy laborers taking a season of rest 
after the summer's traffic, would be grouped in 
the narrow street beneath the precipice whenever 
the wintry sun gave more than its usual warmth 
at mid- day. It was hardly a scene to inspire 
confidence in the future. It was not the begin- 
ning of empire. If one climbed the path leading 
to the top of the rugged slope he could see a 
single cottage that looked as if a settler had come 
to stay. There were cattle-sheds and signs of 
thrift in its garden plot. If Champlain had had 
other colonists like the man who built this house 
and marked out this farmstead, he might have 
died with the hope that New France had been 
planted in this great galley on the basis of 
domestic life. The widow of this genuine settler, 
Hebert, still occupied the house at the time 
when Champlain died, and they point out to you 
now in the upper town the spot where this one 
early householder of Quebec made his little 
struggle to instil a proper spirit of colonization 
into a crowd of barterers and adventurers. From 
this upper level the visitor at this time might 
have glanced across the valley of the St. Charles 



The Land We Live In. 43 

to but a single other sign of permanency in the 
stone manor house of Robert Gifart, which had, 
the previous year, been built at Beauport. 

The French pushed their explorations toward 
the west and missionary stations were established 
in the country of the Hurons. Two French fur- 
traders reached in 1658 the western extremity of 
Lake Superior, and heard from the Indians there 
of the great river — the Mississippi — running 
toward the south. Upon the return of the traders 
to Canada an expedition was organized to pro- 
ceed to the distant region to which the traders 
had penetrated, exchange trinkets for furs, and 
convert the natives to the Christian faith. It 
was now that the French began to reap the fatal 
fruits of their causeless war on the Iroquois. The 
latter attacked and dispersed the expedition, 
killing several Frenchmen. In 1665, western 
exploration was resumed. Father Allouez reaching 
the Falls of St. Mary in September of that year, 
and coasting along the southern shore of Lake 
Superior to the great village of the Chippewas. 
Delegations from a number of Indian nations, 
including the Illinois tribe, met Father Allouez 
in council at vSt. Mary's, and complained of the 
hostile visitations of the Iroquois from the east 
and the Sioux from the west. Father Allouez 
promised them protection against the Iroquois. 
Soon after this the French summoned a great 
convention of the tribes to St. Mary's, and in 
presence of the chieftains formally took posses- 
sion of the country in behalf of the king of 
France. A large wooden cross was elevated with 
religious ceremonies. The priests chanted and 
prayed and the French king was proclaimed 
sovereign of the country along the upper lakes 
and southward to the sea. Thus was founded 
the short-lived empire of France in America. 

The only French occupation of the St. Lawrence 
was not of the kind to flourish. Sir William 



44 The Land We Live In. 

Alexander, in a tract which he published in 1624, 
to induce a more active immigration on the part 
of his countrymen to his province of New Scot- 
land (Nova Scotia), accounts for the want of 
stability in the French colony in that they were 
"only desirous to know the nature and quality 
of the soil and did never seek to have (its pro- 
ducts) in such quantity as was requisite for their 
maintenance, affecting more by making a need- 
less ostentation that the world should know they 
had been there, more in love with glory than with 
virtue Being always subject to divi- 
sions among themselves it was impossible that 
they could subsist, which proceeded sometimes 
from emulation or envy, and at other times from 
the laziness of the disposition of some, who, 
loathing labor, would be commanded by none."* 
In 1660, after more than half a century after the 
first settlement, a census of Canada showed a total 
of 3418 souls, while the inhabitants of New Eng- 
land numbered at the same time not far from 
eighty thousand. The establishment of seign- 
euries was not calculated to invite or promote de- 
sirable immigration. A seigneurial title was given 
to any enterprising person who would undertake 
to plant settlers on the land, and accept in return 
a certain proportion of the grist, furs and fish 
which the occupant could procure by labor. Im- 
migrants of the class which builds up a country 
want to own the land which they cultivate. The 
sense of independence inspires them with energy 
and with a patriotic interest in the common- 
wealth. Another peculiar feature of French 
colonization was the tendency to mingle with the 
natives. As early as 1635, Champlain told the 
Hurons, at his last Council in Quebec, that they 
only needed to embrace the white man's faith if 
they would have the white man take their 

* Winsor's " Cartier to Frontenac." 



The Land We Live In. 45 

daughters in marriage. The English principle was 
to drive out the savage when he could be driven 
out, or to tolerate him as a ward and an inferior 
when it would be unjust to expel or destroy him ; 
the Frenchman embraced the Indian as a brother. 
"The French missionary," says Doyle in his 
Puritan colonies, "well nigh broke with civiliza- 
tion ; he toned down all that was spiritual in his 
religion, and emphasized all that was sensual, 
till he had assimilated it to the wants of the 
savage. The better and worse features of Puri- 
tanism forbade a triumph won on such terms." 
One of the worst products of French colonial life 
was the class known as the ' ' coureurs de bois, ' ' a 
lawless gang, half trader, half explorer, bent on 
divertisement, and not discouraged by misery 
or peril. They lived in a certain fashion to 
which the missionaries themselves were not 
averse, as Lemercier shows where he commends 
the priests of his^ order as being savages among 
savages. Charlevoix tells us that while the 
Indian did not become French, the Frenchman 
became a savage Talon speaks of these vaga- 
bonds as living as banditti, gathering furs as they 
could and bringing them to Albany or Montreal 
to sell, just as it proved the easiest. If the in- 
tendant could have controlled them he would 
have made them marry, give up trade and the 
wilderness, and settle down to work. 



46 The Land We Live In. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Henry Hudson's Discover}'— Block Winters on Manhat- 
tan Island — The Dutch Take Possession — The Iroquois 
Friendly — Immigration of the Walloons — Charter of Privi- 
leges and Exemptions— Patroons— Manufactures Forbid- 
den — Slave I^abor Introduced — New Sweden— New Nether- 
landers Want a Voice in the Government. 

When Henry Hudson managed, notwithstand- 
ing his detention in England by King James, to 
send an account of his discoveries to Holland, 
the Dutch were swift to avail themselves of the 
opportunities thus offered to extend their trade 
to North America. The traders who first sought 
Manhattan Island and Hudson's River, or the 
' ' Mauritius' ' as the Dutch called the North River, 
were not settlers. Among them was the daring 
navigator, Adrian Block, from whom Block 
Island is named, who gathered a cargo of skins 
and was about to depart, late in the year 1613, 
when vessel and cargo were consumed by fire. 
Block and his crew built log-cabins on the lower 
part of Manhattan Island, and spent the winter 
constructing a new ship, which they called the 
*'Onrust" or "unrest" — an incident and a name 
significant now in view of the commercial pre- 
eminence and activity of the metropolis founded 
where those men built the first habitations oc- 
cupied by Europeans. Block sailed in the spring 
of 1614 on a voyage of further discovery in his 
American built ship. He passed through the 
East River and Long Island Sound and ascer- 
tained that the long strip of land on the south 
was an island. He saw and named Block Island, 
and entered Narragansett Bay and the harbor of 
Boston. His report led the States-General to 
grant a charter for four years from October 11, 
1614, to a company formed to trade in the region 
which Block had explored, the territory "lying 
between Virginia and New France," being called 



The Land We Live In. 47 

the New Netherland. When the charter expired, 
the States- General refused to grant a renewal, it 
being designed to place New Netherland under 
the jurisdiction of the Dutch West India Com- 
pany as soon as that company should have re- 
ceived the charter for which application had 
been made. This charter, granted June 3, 1620, 
conferred on the Dutch West India Company 
almost sovereign powers over the Atlantic coast 
of America, so far as it was unoccupied by other 
nations, and the western coast of Africa. The 
Company was organized in 1622, and its attention 
was at once called to the necessity of founding a 
permanent colony in the New Netherland in order 
to preserve the country from seizure by the Eng- 
lish, now established in New Plymouth to the 
north, as well as Virginia on the south. Dutch 
traders had not been idle during the period be- 
tween the lapse of the old charter and organiza- 
tion under the new and the West India Company 
found its operations greatly facilitated by the 
labors of the pioneers. The storehouse on Man- 
hattan Island had been enlarged, a fort had been 
erected on an island near the site of Albany, and 
the Iroquois had learned that in the Dutch they 
had an ally who would assist them with arms at 
least against their enemies on the St. Lawrence. 
The West India Company began wisely the work of 
settlement. They invited the Walloons, Protest- 
ant refugees from the Belgic provinces of Spain, 
to emigrate to New Netherland. They were most 
desirable settlers for a new country, as industrious 
as they were intelligent and religious, and well 
versed in agriculture as well as the mechanical 
and finer arts. Having abandoned their homes 
for conscience' sake they could be trusted to do 
their duty loyally to their adopted State, and to 
advance to the best of thei? ability the interests 
of the Company. 

Thirty families, including one hundred and ten 



48 The Laud We Live Ln. 

men, women and children, and most of them 
Walloons, were in the first emigration. Four of 
the families, young couples who had been mar- 
ried on shipboard, and who, perhaps, concluded 
that they would get along better apart from the 
older households, chose to settle on the Delaware, 
four miles below the site of Philadelphia, where 
they built a blockhouse and called it Fort Nassau. 
Eight seamen went with them and formed a part 
of their colony, which grew and prospered. 
Others of the emigrants went to Long Island; 
some founded Albany ; some settled on the Con- 
necticut River, and several families made their 
homes in what is at present Ulster County. The 
Company sent over Peter Minuit as Governor in 
1626, who bought from the natives their title to 
Manhattan Island, paying therefor trinkets and 
liquor to the value of twenty-four dollars. Gov- 
ernor Minuit built a fortification at the southern 
end of the island, and called it New Amsterdam. 
The States-General constituted the colony a county 
of Holland, and bestowed on it a seal, being a 
shield enclosed in a chain, with an escutcheon 
on which was the figure of a beaver. The crest 
was the coronet of a count. 

In 1629 the Dutch West India Company gave to 
the settlers a charter of "privileges and exemp- 
tions," and sought to encourage immigration by 
offering as much land as the immigrants could 
cultivate, with free liberty of hunting and fowl- 
ing under the direction of the Governor. They 
also offered to any person who should "discover 
any shore, baj- or other fit place for erecting 
fisheries or the making of salt pounds" an ab- 
solute property in the same. To further promote 
the settlement of New Netherland the company 
proposed to grant lanck in any part of the colony 
outside the island of Manhattan, to the extent of 
sixteen miles along any navigable stream, or four 
miles if on each shore, and indefinitely in the 



The Land We Live Ln. 49 

interior, to any person who should agree to plant 
a colony of adults within four years; or if he 
should bring more, his domain to be enlarged in 
proportion. He was to be the absolute lord of 
the manor, with the feudal right to hold manorial 
courts ; and if cities should grow up on his 
domain he was to have power to appoint the 
magistrates and other officers of such municipal- 
ities, and have a deputy to confer with the Gov- 
ernor. Settlers under these lords, who were 
known as patroons — a term synonymous with the 
Scottish "laird" and the Swedish "patroon" — 
were to be exempt for ten years from the pay- 
ment of taxes and tribute for the support of the 
colonial government, and for the same period 
every man, woman and child was bound not to 
leave the service of the patroon without his 
written consent. In order to prevent the colo- 
nists from building up local manufactures to the 
detriment of Holland industries and of the Com- 
pany's trade, the settlers w'ere forbidden to 
manufacture cloth of any kind under pain of 
banishment, and the Company agreed to supply 
settlers with as many African slaves "as they con- 
veniently could," and to protect them against 
enemies. Each settlement was required to sup- 
port a minister of the gospel and a schoolmas- 
ter. The system thus established contained the 
seed of evil as well as of good. African slave 
labor, already introduced in Virginia, where the 
climate was some excuse for its adoption, worked 
injury to the New Netherland, where all the con- 
ditions were favorable to white labor, and tended 
to create a servile class. The negroes, both bond 
and free, were for many years a most obnoxious 
element in the colon}', viewed with apprehension 
and suspicion even down to the beginning of the 
present century by the general body of white 
citizens, and often subjected to most cruel and 
unjust persecution and punishment on charges 



50 The Land We Live In. 

that were either baseless or founded only in 
malice. The restriction on domestic manu- 
factures was another barb in the side of the colo- 
nists, and that policy continued by the English 
successors of the Dutch, had much to do with 
exciting the War for Independence. The pa- 
troons also were an aristocratic element foreign 
to the prevalent spirit of North American settle- 
ment, and their feudal rule, although liberal and 
patriarchal in some instances, became less toler- 
able as years rolled on, and the people compre- 
hended the absurdity and injustice of mediaeval 
institutions on American soil. It is fortunate 
that the patroon system, unlike slavery, was ulti- 
mately uprooted without revolution. 

******* 
Americans should be proud of the fact that 
Gustavus Adolphus, the great king of Sweden 
who died on the field of Lutzen in the cause of 
religious liberty, gave his approval to the project 
for planting a Swedish colony in America, and 
by proclamation, while in the midst of his cam- 
paign against the Catholic League, recommended 
the enterprise to his people. Eighteen days later 
the champion of Protestantism fell in the hour 
of victory, and a noble monument erected by the 
German people marks the spot where he gave up 
his life that Germany might be free. The scheme 
was carried out by the regency which took charge 
of the kingdom, and Governor Minuit, recalled 
from New Netherland, sailed from Gottenburg in 
1637 to plant a new colony on the west side of 
Delaware Bay. The colonists arrived at their 
destination in the spring of 1638, and Minuit 
procured from an Indian sachem a deed for a 
region which, the Swedes claimed, extended 
from Cape Henlopen to the Falls of the Delaware, 
where Trenton is now, and an indefinite distance 
inland. The Dutch protested and threatened, but 
Minuit built a fort on the site of Wilmington, 



The Land We Live In. 51 

and called it Fort Christina, in honor of the 
young queen of Sweden, daughter of Gustavus 
Adolphus. The colony prospered, and a number 
of Hollanders settled there with the Swedes. 
Minuit died in 1641, and the Swedish govern- 
ment proceeded to place the colony on a per- 
manent footing, and called it ' ' New Sweden. ' ' 
The colony was unable to hold its own against 
the Dutch, and surrendered in 1655 to an expedi- 
tion led by Peter Stuyvesant. 

While New Netherland remained under Dutch 
rule the people had no voice in the choice of 
those officers whose duties were more than local 
in character. The governor was an appointee of 
the West India Company, and responsible solely 
to it ; though the latter was subject to a certain 
amount of control from the States-General. That 
the people desired the privilege of electing their 
general officers, is shown by a petition sent in 
1649 to the States-General from the Nine Men. 
A request was made in this document for a suit- 
able system of government, and it was accom- 
panied by a sketch of the methods of written 
proxies used by the New England colonies in 
selecting their governors. On the other hand, a 
letter sent two years later by the magistrates of 
Gravesend to the directors at Amsterdam, stated 
that it would involve "ruin and destruction" to 
frequently change the government by allowing 
the people to elect the governor, partly on ac- 
count of the numerous factions, and partly be- 
cause there were no persons in the province 
capable of filling the office. Nor did the Dutch 
colonists possess any voice in the making of 
laws. There was no regular representative assem- 
bly, although we find that there were several 
emergencies when the advice of the people was 
asked by the governors.* 

*See "History of Elections in the American Colonies.' 
Columbia Colleore Series. 



52 The Land We Live Ln. 



CHAPTER V. 

landing of the Pilgrims — Their Abiding Faith m God's 
Goodness— The Agreement Signed on the Mayflower— A 
Winter of Hardship — The Indians Help the Settlers— Im- 
proved Conditions— The Colony Buys Its Freedom— 
Priscilla and John Alden — Their Romantic Courtship and 
Marriage. 

It is usual to celebrate the landing day of the 
Pilgrim Fathers on the bleak shore of New Ply- 
mouth, December ii (22) 1620, as the beginning 
of New England. It was an event which richh- 
deserves all the commemoration in song and story 
and banquet-hall which it has received or ever 
will receive, but the real and substantial founda- 
tion of New England was laid about ten years 
later, when a numerous and well-to-do body of 
Puritans, under a charter granted by the crown, 
formed the colony of Massachusetts Bay, The 
Pilgrim Fathers were merely a handful in number, 
and as poor as they were loyal and conscientious. 
Exiles to Holland, they declined an offer from 
the Dutch West India Company to accept lands 
in New Netherland. They wished to remain 
English, and with the aid of some London mer- 
chants whose Puritan sympathies were mingled 
with a desire for gain, the little community pro- 
cured the means to sail for "the northern parts 
of Virginia." The Pilgrims were just as true to 
King James as the settlers of Jamestown, but thej^ 
did not intend to join that colony, whose mem- 
bers were attached to the Established Church, so 
far as they had any religion, and where dissenters 
would have been ill at ease. At the same time 
the immigrants in the Mayflower did not intend 
to land so far north as they did. The wearisome 
voyage, however, made them anxious to get on 
shore, the land could not be more inhospitable 
than the winter sea, and they had an abiding 



The Land We Live Ln. 53 

faith in God's goodness and providence which 
enabled them to face with resolution the hard- 
ships and dangers of the northern wilderness. 
The act which the men of the party signed on 
the Mayflower, previous to landing, showed that 
they were determined to have an orderly govern- 
ment. It was the first American constitution, 
and as such deserves to be remembered : "In the 
name of God, Amen. We, whose names are 
hereunder written, the loyal subjects of our dread 
sovereign lord, King James, by the grace of God, 
of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, 
Defender of the Faith, etc., having undertaken 
for the glory of God and the advancement of the 
Christian Faith, and honor of our King and 
country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the 
northern parts of Virginia, do, by these presents, 
solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God 
and of one another, covenant and combine our- 
selves together into a civil body politic for our 
better ordering and preservation and furtherance 
of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to 
enact, constitute and frame such just and equal 
laws, ordinances, acts, constitution and offices, 
from time to time, as shall be thought most meet 
and convenient for the general good of the colony, 
unto which we promise all due submission and 
obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunto 
subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the nth of 
November (O. S. ) in the year of the reign of our 
sovereign lord. King James of England, France 
and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the 
fifty-fourth. Anno Domini 1620." 

The day of landing was, as already stated, 
December 11, or according to the new style, De- 
cember 22. The spot which the Pilgrims selected 
for settlement was well-watered and promising, and 
they gave to it the name of the haven where they 
had taken a final leave of their native land. The 
winter was fortunately mild, but they had to 



54 The Land We Live Ln. 

endure cruel hardships. Their stores were scanty ; 
they had no fishing tackle, and game was not 
abundant. Fortunately spring came early ; but 
forty-four of the little company succumbed to 
want and cold, and those who retained their 
health were hardly equal to the task of nursing 
the sick and burying the dead. Had the savages 
been numerous and hostile they could have swept 
the little settlement out of existence with but 
small effort ; but the country had been wasted not 
long before by a deadly pestilence and the native 
tribes were too weak and too much in fear of 
more powerful enemies of their own race, to 
make an attack on the strangers. Instead of 
injuring the newcomers the Indians helped them, 
brought them game and fish, and taught them 
how to cultivate corn. In 1623 the colony had, 
with new arrivals, about one hundred and fifty 
inhabitants. The first division of land was made 
this year, and a large crop of corn was harvested. 
Twelve 3'ears after the foundation the people of 
Plymouth hardly numbered five hundred, and 
they were soon overshadowed by the large Puritan 
immigration to Salem and Boston. The poor and 
struggling settlers of Plymouth did not even have 
the satisfaction of knowing that the fruits of 
their toils and sufferings would be their own. 
They were still bound to the London merchants 
who had supplied them with the means for emi- 
gration, and these partners in the enterprise were 
impatient of the lack of returns. As the Pilgrims 
gradually grew better off they were the more 
anxious to remove the yoke which interfered with 
their independence, and some members of the 
community who were richer than the others 
agreed, in exchange for a monopoly of the 
Indian trade and the surrender of the accumu- 
lated wealth of the colony, to pay its debt to the 
English shareholders. The colony thus achieved 
its freedom, and its members were able to proceed 



The Land We Live Iji. 55 

in building their settlement according to their 
own ideas of religion and civil government with- 
out restraint from partners who had sought only 
for worldly profit. 

One of the most interesting incidents connected 
with the early history of the Plymouth Colony 
was the romantic marriage of Priscilla and John 
Alden, immortalized in the verse of Longfellow. 
Captain Miles Standish was a redoubtable soldier, 
small in person, but of great activity and courage. 
He came over in the Mayflower, and his wife 
Rose Standish fell a victim to the privations 
which attended the first year in America. An- 
other passenger on the Mayflower was Priscilla 
MuUins, daughter of William Mullins, a maiden 
of unusual beauty, just blooming into woman- 
hood. The gallant widower fell in love with 
Priscilla, but for some reason which does not 
clearly appear, but probably bashfulness, he sent 
another to do his courting. Standish himself 
was about thirty-seven years of age, and doubtless 
showed the effect of his hard service in the wars. 
Nevertheless, he might have won Priscilla had 
he gone for her in person, for, as the military 
leader of the colony, beset as it was by savages 
who might at any time become hostile, he was a 
man of importance and desirable for a son-in- 
law. He made the mistake of choosing as 
Cupid's messenger a handsome young man named 
John Alden, a cooper from Southampton, with 
whom Priscilla was already well acquainted, and 
with whom she had quite possibly wliiled away 
many hours of the wearisome three months' 
voyage from old Plymouth. Alden and Priscilla 
may have been in love with each other already, 
when Captain Standish sent the youth on his 
embarrassing mission. Even the rigid rules of 
Puritanism could not prevent young men and 
women from falling in love, while their elders 
were engaged in more sedate occupations. It is 



56 The Land We Live In. 

to be said for Standish, also, that he evidently 
did not intend that the young man should state 
the case to Priscilla, but only to her father. The 
parent promptly gave his consent, but added that 
' ' Priscilla must be consulted. ' ' The maiden was 
called into the room, and a brighter light dawned 
in her eyes, and a ruddier flush suffused her 
cheeks, as her gaze met that of the handsome 
young cooper. John Alden, too, could not 
remain unaffected, as he repeated his message to 
the fair young woman, into whose ears he had 
probably poured sweet nothings many a time 
while they dreamed, perhaps, of the day when 
more serious words would be spoken. Priscilla 
asked why Captain Standish had not come him- 
self. Alden replied that the Captain was too 
busy. This naturally made the maiden indig- 
nant, for she was justified in assuming that no 
business could be more important than that of 
asking for her hand. It is also possible that she 
was glad of an excuse for rejecting the proffered 
honor. She declared that she would never marry 
a man who was too busy to court her, adding, in 
the words of Longfellow : 

" Had he waited awhile, had only showed that he loved me, 
Even this captain of yours — who knows? — at last might 

have won me. 
Old and rough as he is, but now it never can happen." 

John Alden pressed the suit in behalf of his 
soldier friend, secretly hoping, it is to be feared, 
that Priscilla would not take him too much in 
earnest, when, continues Longfellow : 

" Archly the maiden smiled, and with eyes over-runniug 
with laughter, 

Said, in a tremulous voice : " Why don't you speak for your- 
self, John ? ' " 

John did not speak for himself — at least not 
directly, on that occasion, but he did later on, 
and shortly after\vard the marriage of John Alden 



The Land We Live In. 57 

and Priscilla Mullins was celebrated with all the 
display that the Plymouth settlers could afford. 
Captain Standish did not blame Alden, but he 
did not remain long near the scene of his disap- 
pointment, moving, in 1626, to Duxbury, Massa- 
chusetts. He lived to a hale old age, respected 
both for his private virtues and his public ser- 
vices. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Puritan Immigration— Wealth and Learning Seek 
These Shores— Charter Restrictions Dead Letters— A Stub- 
born Struggle for Self-government— Methods of Election— 
The Early Government an Oligarchy — The Charter of 
1691— New Hampshire and Maine— The New Haven The- 
ocracy—Hartford's Constitution— The United Colonies— 
The Clergy and Politics — Every Election Sermon a 
Declaration of Independence. 

John Endicott's settlement at Salem, and the 
large immigration which followed the granting 
of a royal patent to the Massachusetts Bay Com- 
pany, together with the transfer of the charter 
and corporate powers of the company from Eng- 
land to Massachusetts, led to the growth of a 
powerful Puritan commonwealth which over- 
shadowed and ultimately absorbed the feeble 
settlement at Plymouth. The natal day of New 
England was that on which John Winthro'p 
landed at Salem, with nine hundred immigrants 
in the summer of 1630, bringing not merely 
virtue, muscle and brawn, such as carried the 
Pilgrims through their appalling experience, but 
wealth and substance, learning and art, men to 
command as well as men to obey. From that 
time, except during the season of depression 
which followed King Philip's war, New England 
went steadily forward in population, prosperity 
and political power. Her rulers were well able 
to meet and defeat their would-be oppressors in 



58 The Land We Live Ln. 

the field of diplomacy, and now defying, now- 
ignoring and again pretending to yield to royal 
dictation, Massachusetts never gave up the prin- 
ciples which animated her founders, or the pur- 
pose which prompted them to abandon homes of 
comfort and even of luxury, and establish new 
institutions in a new world. The Massachusetts 
settlers were forbidden by the terms of their 
charter to enact any laws repugnant to the laws 
of England, This restriction was a dead letter 
from the very beginning. Indeed, literally 
construed, it would have defeated the very object 
of Puritan emigration — to escape from the rule 
of a hierarchy established under English laws. 
As Massachusetts was for man}' years the leading 
colony of the north of English origin, and prob- 
ably made more of an impress than any other 
colony and State upon our national character, it 
may be of interest to quote here a sketch of its 
political institutions and their changes in the 
colonial period. 

The charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company 
authorized the election of a governor, deputy 
governor and eighteen assistants on the last 
Wednesday of Easter. Endicott, the first gov- 
ernor, was chosen b}' the company in London in 
April, 1629, but in October of the following year 
it was resolved that the governor and deputy 
governor should be chosen by the assistants out 
of their own number. After 1632, however, the 
governor was chosen by the whole body of the 
freemen from among the assistants at a general 
court or assembly held in May of each year. The 
deputy governor was elected at the same time. 
The charter, as already mentioned, provided also 
for the annual election of assistants or magis- 
trates, whose number was fixed at eighteen. 
Besides the oflBcers mentioned in the charter, an 
order of 1647 declared that a treasurer, major- 
general, admiral at sea, commissioners for the 



The Land We Live In. 59 

United Colonies, secretary of the General Court 
and "such others as are, or hereafter may be, of 
like general nature," should be chosen annually 
"by the freemen of this jurisdiction." The 
voting took place in Boston in May at a court of 
election held annually, and freemen could vote at 
first only in person, but eventually by proxy 
also, if they desired to do so. In both Massa- 
chusetts and New Plymouth all freemen had 
originally a personal voice in the transaction of 
public business at the general courts or assemblies 
which were held at stated intervals. One of these 
was known as the Court of Election, and at this 
were chosen the officers of the colony for the 
ensuing year. As the number of settlements 
increased, it became inconvenient for freemen 
to attend the general courts in person and they 
were allowed to be represented by deputies. As 
it was impossible for all freemen when the colony 
became more populated, to attend the courts of 
election, the deputies were at length permitted 
to carry the votes of their townsmen to Boston. 

The governor, as well as the other officers in 
Massachusetts, were first chosen by show of hands, 
but about 1634 it was provided that the names 
should be written on papers, the papers to be 
open or only once folded, so that they might be 
the sooner perused. Afterward the voting was 
by corn and beans, a grain of Indian corn signi- 
fying election, and a black bean the contrary. 
The offence of ballot-box stuffing seems to have 
existed, or at least was provided against even 
among the early Puritans, for it was enacted that 
any freeman putting more than one grain should 
be fined ten pounds — a large sum of money in 
those days. 

The Massachusetts colonial government has 
been called a theocracy. As a matter of fact it 
was an oligarchy, the political power residing in 
but a small proportion of even the church-going 



6o The Land We Live In. 

freemen. This is shown in the remonstrance 
addressed to the colony by the royal commission 
appointed under King Charles II. to investigate 
the governments of the New England colonies. 
Said the Commissioners to Massachusetts: 

"You haue so tentered the king's qualliffica- 
tions as in making him only who paieth ten 
shillings to a single rate to be of competent 
estate, that when the king shall be enformed, as 
the trueth is, that not one church member in an 
hundred payes so much & yt in a toune of an 
hundred inhabitants, scarse three such men are 
to be found, wee feare that the king wall rather 
finde himself deluded than satisfied by your late 
act. ' ' 

During the rule of Dudley and Andros the 
whole legislative power of Massachusetts was 
lodged in a council, appointed by the crown 
through its governor, and popular election in 
the New England colonies was limited to the 
choice of selectmen at a single meeting held an- 
nually in each town, on the third Monday in 
May. 

The ultimate result of the revolution of 1688 in 
England was to unite Massachusetts and New 
Plymouth under the Charter of 1691. By virtue 
of this instrument, "the Great and General Court 
of Assembly" was to consist of "the Governor 
and Council or Assistants for the time being, and 
such Freeholders of our said Province or Terri- 
tory as shall be from time to time elected or 
deputed by the Major parte of the Freeholders 
and other Inhabitants of the respective Townes 
and Places. ' ' The governor, deputy governor 
and secretary and the first assistants were ap- 
pointed. After the first year, the assistants were 
to be annually elected by the General Assembly. 
Under this charter, with the exception of the de- 
puties, the only elective officers w^hose functions 
were at all general in their nature were the 



The Land We Live In. 6i 

county treasurers, and they were chosen upon the 
basis of the town rather than upon the basis of 
the provincial suffrage. 



New Hampshire owed its original settlement to 
John Mason, a London merchant, who was asso- 
ciated with Sir Ferdinand Gorges in obtaining a 
grant of land in 1622, from the Merrimac to the 
Kennebec and inland to the St. Lawrence. 
Gorges and Mason agreed to divide their domain 
at the Piscataqua. Mason, obtaining a patent for 
his portion of the territory, called it New Hamp- 
shire, in commemoration of the fact that he had 
been governor of Portsmouth in Hampshire, Eng- 
land. The Rev. Mr. Wheelwright, brother of 
Anne Hutchinson, founded Exeter. The New 
Hampshire settlements were annexed by Massa- 
chusetts in 1641, and remained dependent on 
that colony until 1680, when New Hampshire 
became a royal province, ruled by a governor 
and council and house of representatives elected 
by the people. The settlers of New Hampshire 
were mostly Puritans, and thoroughly in sym- 
pathy with the political-religious sj^stem of 
Massachusetts. Massachusetts obtained jurisdic- 
tion over Maine through purchase from Gorges, 
and that territory remained attached to Massa- 
chusetts until 1820. Vermont had no separate 
existence until the Revolution. 



The colonies of Connecticut and New Haven 
were in full sympathy with the religious and 
political system of Massachusetts. The first 
meeting of all the "free planters" of New 
Haven was held on the fourth day of June, 1639, 
for the purpose "of settling civil government 
according to God, and about the nomination of 
persons that might be found by consent of all, 



62 The Land We Live In. 

fittest in all respects for the foundation work of 
a church. ' ' The meeting was opened with 
prayer. There was some debate as to whether 
the planters should give to free burgesses the 
power of making ordinances, but it was ulti- 
mately decided to do so. The minutes of the 
meeting show that this decision was arrived at 
on the authority of several passages from the 
Bible — such as "Take you wise men and under- 
standing, and know among your tribes and I will 
make them rulers over you, " and "Thou shalt in 
any wise set him king over thee whom the Lord 
thy God shall choose; one from among thy 
brethren shalt thou set king over thee ; thou 
mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not 
thy brother. ' ' The model followed in the gov- 
ernmental organization was the liveries of the 
city of London which chose the magistrates and 
were themselves elected by the companies. Ac- 
cordingly, the planters of New Haven elected a 
committee of eleven men, and gave them power 
to choose the seven founders of the theocracy 
they had decided to establish. The seven 
founders met as a court of election in October of 
the same year and admitted upon oath several 
members of ' ' approved churches. ' ' After read- 
ing a number of passages from the Bible bearing 
on the subject of an ideal ruler, they proceeded 
to the election of a chief magistrate and four 
deputy magistrates. The franchise in all cases 
was confined to church members. In the Hart- 
ford colony, which was Connecticut proper, the 
earliest mention of elections is found in the 
Fundamental Orders of 1638, which have become 
famous as the first written constitution framed on 
the American continent. It was enacted that a 
governor and six magistrates should be chosen 
annually by the freemen of the jurisdiction. A 
deputy governor was also chosen. The Charter 
of Charles II. , which placed the New Haven and 



The Land We Live In. 63 

the Hartford colonies under one government, 
provided for the same general officers, together 
with twelve assistants, a secretary and a treasurer 
being added in 1689. 

In 1643, the four colonies of Massachusetts, 
Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven formed a 
confederation for defence against the Indians and 
also the Dutch, who had claimed that a portion 
of what is now the State of Connecticut was in- 
cluded within their jurisdiction. The confedera- 
tion was called the United Colonies of New 
England, and its affairs were managed by a 
board of eight commissioners, two from each 
colony. The commissioners could summon troops 
in case of necessity and settle disputes between 
the colonies. This union proved most effective 
in the subsequent war with King Philip. It was 
the germ of American confederation. 

The election sermon was a prominent feature 
of election day in the Puritan colonies. The 
clergyman to deliver the sermon was selected by 
the freemen, and it was considered a great honor 
to be chosen for the office. The preacher often 
dealt with public questions, and especially 
during the troublous times which preceded the 
Revolution. Instead of pastors being blamed for 
interference in politics the General Court some- 
times sent a general request to all ministers of 
the gospel resident in the colony asking them to 
preach on election day before the freemen of each 
plantation a sermon "proper for direction in the 
choice of civil rulers. ' ' The pulpit in that age 
held the place now occupied by the newspaper 
editorial page, so far as vital questions affecting 
the body politic were concerned. The clergy 
were, as a class, learned and eloquent, and the 
freemen looked to them for guidance in political 
as well as religious problems, and it cannot be 
denied that the ministers never shrank from the 
responsibility put upon them. They stood up for 



64 The Land We Live In. 

the colonies against king and parliament, against 
royal menace and muskets, and for years before 
the Continental Congress pronounced for freedom 
every election sermon was a declaration of inde- 
pendence. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Where Conscience Was Free — Roger Williams and His 
Providence Colony — Driven by Persecution from Massa- 
chusetts—Savages Receive Him Kindly—Coddington's 
Settlement in Rhode Island — Oliver Cromwell and Charles 
n. Grant Charters— Peculiar Referendum in Early Rhode 
Island. 

"Take heart with us, O man of old, 
Soul-freedom's brave confessor, 
So love of God and man wax strong, 
I^etsect and creed be lesser. 

" The jarring discords of thy day 
In ours one hymn are swelling ; 
The wandering feet, the severed paths 
All seek our Father's dwelling. 

" And slowly learns the world the truth 
That makes us all thy debtor, — 
That holy life is more than rite^ 
And spirit more than letter. 

" That they who differ pole-wide serve 
Perchance one common Master. 
And other sheep he hath than they 
That graze one common pasture." 

Whittier. 

One New England community stood apart from 
all the rest. Roger Williams, a learned and able 
minister, supposed to have been born in Wales, 
came to Boston in 1630, accompanied by his 
wife, Mary, an Englishwoman. Williams denied 
the right of the magistrates to interfere with the 
consciences of men, and also held that the Indians 
should not be deprived of their lands without 
fair and equitable purchase. His stand in favor 



The Land Wc Live In. 65 

of soul-liberty was a novelty in that age when 
State and Church were regarded as inseparable, 
the only difference on this question between 
Massachusetts and England being as to the char- 
acter of the public worship which the State 
should enforce upon consciences willing and un- 
willing. The doctrine of Roger Williams, there- 
fore, seemed to the Boston authorities to strike 
at the very foundation of all government, and in 
particular of their government. In the autumn 
of 1635, when Roger Williams was pastor of the 
church at Salem, the General Court of Massachu- 
setts ordered him to quit the colony within six 
months. Afterward suspecting that Williams was 
preparing to found a new colony, the Boston 
magistrates resolved to deport him to England, 
and a vessel was sent to Salem to take him away, 
Williams received timel}' warning, and fled from 
his home in mid-winter, and made his way 
through the wilderness to the shores of Narragan- 
sett Bay. He was joined by five companions, 
and at a fine spring near the head of Narragansett 
Bay they planted a colony, and Williams called 
the place ' ' Providence, ' ' in grateful acknowledg- 
ment of God's providence to him in his distress. 
Williams and his companions founded a pure 
democracy, with no interference with the rights 
of conscience. Indeed, they carried this prin- 
ciple to an extreme at which even in these days 
most people would hesitate, for one member of 
the colony was disciplined because he objected to 
his wife's frequent attendance on the preaching 
of Mr. Williams to the neglect of her household 
duties. Rhode Island became a refuge for the 
victims of Puritan intolerance, without regard to 
their belief or unbelief, and was therefore held 
in hatred and contempt by the Boston people. 
This very hatred was the salvation of Rhode 
Island, the government of England being favor- 
ably inclined to the colony on account of the 



66 The Land We Live Ln. 

stubborn and independent attitude of Massachu- 
setts toward the home authorities. 

The name "Rhode Island" requires mention 
here of the fact that Rhode Island and Providence 
Plantations were originally separate settlements. 
In 1638 William Coddington, a native of Lincoln- 
shire, England, and for some time a magistrate of 
Boston, was driven from Massachusetts along with 
others who had taken a prominent part on the side 
of Anne Hutchinson, in the controversy between 
that brilliant woman and the dominant element 
of the church. Coddington and his eighteen 
companions bought from the Indians the island 
of Aquitneck, or Rhode Island, and made settle- 
ments on the sites of Newport and Portsmouth. 
A third settlement was founded at Warwick, on 
the mainland, in 1643, by a party of whom John 
Greene and Samuel Gorton were leaders. Roger 
Williams went to England in the same year, and 
in 1644 he brou'ght back a charter which united 
the settlements at Providence and on Rhode 
Island in one colony, called the Rhode Island 
and Providence Plantations. The charter was 
confirmed by Oliver Cromwell in 1655, and a new 
charter was granted by Charles II. in 1663. Under 
the Parliament charter of 1664 Providence, in 
1647, sent a "committee" to Portsmouth to join 
with committees from other towns in order to 
form a government. The fifth "act and order" 
established by this convention provided that each 
town should send a committee to every general 
court, and these, like the deputies in Massachu- 
setts and Plymouth, could exercise the powers of 
the freemen in all matters excepting the election 
of ofi&cers. The committee from each town was to 
consist of six members. 

A peculiar feature of early Rhode Island gov- 
ernment was the jealousy with which the people 
retained in their own control the law-making 
power. Matters of general concern were proposed 



The Land We Live In. 67 

in some town meeting, and notice of the pro- 
position had to be given to other towns. Towns 
which approved of the proposition were ordered 
to declare their opinion at the next general court 
through their committees. If the court decided 
in favor of the proposition a law was passed 
which had aiithority only until ratified by the 
next general assembly of all the people. The 
general court was also allowed to debate matters 
on its own motion, but its decisions must be 
reported to each town by the committee repre- 
senting that town. A meeting of the town was 
held to debate on the questions so reported and 
then the votes of the inhabitants were collected 
by the town •clerk and forwarded with all speed 
to the recorder of the colony. The latter was 
to open, in the presence of the governor, all votes 
so received, and if a majority voted affirmatively 
the resolution of the court was to vStand as law 
until the next general assembly. This complex 
method was repealed in 1650, and instead, it was 
ordered that all laws enacted by the assembly 
should be communicated to the towns within six 
days after adjournment. Within three days after 
the laws were received the chief officer of each 
town was to call a meeting and read them to the 
freemen. If any freeman disliked a particular 
law he could, within ten days, send his vote in 
writing, with his name afiixed, to the general 
recorder. If within ten days the recorder received 
a majority of votes against any law, he was to 
notify the president of that fact and the latter in 
turn was to give notice to each town that such 
law was null and void. Silence as to the remain- 
ing enactments was assumed to mean assent. 

After 1658, the recorder was allowed ten days 
instead of six, as the period within which the 
laws must be sent to the towns. The towns had 
another ten days for consideration, and then if 
the majority of the free inhabitants of any one 



68 The Land We Live Ln. 

of them in a lawful assembly voted against a 
given enactment, they could send their votes 
sealed up in a package to the recorder. If a 
majority from every town voted against the law 
it was thereby nullified; but unless this was 
done within twenty days after the adjournment 
of the court the law would continue binding. In 
1660, three months were allowed for the return 
of votes to the recorder. Instead of a majority of 
each town, a majority of all the free inhabitants 
of the colony was sufficient to nullify a law. The 
charter of King Charles II. restricted the privi- 
lege of voting to freeholders and the eldest sons 
of freeholders. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Puritans and Education — Provision for Public Schools- 
Puritan Sincerity — Kfifect of Intolerance on the Com- 
munity—Quakers Harshly Persecuted— The Salem Witch- 
craft Tragedy — History of the Delusion — Rebecca Nourse 
and Other Victims— The People Come to Their Senses- 
Cotton Mather Obdurate to the Last— Puritan Morals — 
Comer's Diary — Rhode Island in Colonial Times. 

It is to the credit of the Puritans that promptly 
upon their settlement in Massachusetts they made 
provision for education. Many of the Puritans 
were learned men, and some of them graduates 
of Cambridge in England, and when a school was 
established at Newtown for the education of the 
ministry, the name of the place was changed to 
Cambridge. When John Harvard endowed the 
school in 1638 with his library and the gift of 
one half his estate — about ^4000, but equal to 
much more than that amount at the present day — 
the school was erected into a college and named 
Harvard College after the founder. The central 
aim and purpose of Puritan education was relig- 
ious. The schools were maintained so that the 
children could learn to read the Bible, and also 



The Land We Live In. 69 

incidentally the printed fulminations of the 
ministers and magistrates. The Massachusetts 
school law of 1649 set forth in the preamble that, 
"it being one chief project of that old deluder, 
Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the 
Scriptures, as in former times keeping them in 
an unknown tongue, so in these later times per- 
suading men from the use of tongues, so that at the 
least a true sense and meaning of the original 
might be clouded with false glossing of saint- 
seeming deceivers, and that learning may not be 
buried in the grave of our fathers, ' ' therefore, 
etc. Every township was required to maintain a 
school for reading and writing, and every town 
of a hundred householders a grammar-school, 
with a teacher qualified to fit youths for the uni- 
versity. This school law was enacted likewise in 
the other Puritan colonies. While its object was 
to strengthen the hold of religion, as expounded 
by the Puritan ministry, upon the people, its 
general effect was to spread intelligence along 
with learning, and to break down the barriers of 
intolerance. It is a significant fact, however, 
and in accordance with the lessons of more recent 
history, that the seat of the highest education 
was not always the seat of the highest intelli- 
gence. The witchcraft delusion found a haven 
in Harvard when the common sense of a com- 
mon-school educated people rejected it by a 
decisive majorit}-. 

The Puritan was stern and cruel because he was 
thoroughly in earnest. He believed his religion to 
be true, and that the only path to salvation' lay 
through rigid compliance with Puritan doctrine. 
Believing as he did he was logical; he was 
humane. The non-Puritan was, in his view, a 
pestilence to be got rid of by the most heroic 
measures if necessary. In acting on this prin- 
ciple he was kind, in his judgment, to the many 
whom he saved from pollution and damnation by 



70 The Land We Live Ln. 

the sacrifice of the few. The devil, to the Puri- 
tan, was terribly personal, and Cotton Mather's 
horror of witchcraft was grounded in a sincere 
belief in that personality. The forces of evil 
were always active, and the Puritan believed in 
combating them in the most vigorous and 
trenchant fashion. The Scripture enjoined upon 
him to pluck out his own eye if it offended, and 
it was natural that he should not hesitate to 
sacrifice others when they offended. With all 
his severity he took good care to let transgressors 
know what they had to expect, and he felt the 
less compunction, therefore, in inflicting penal- 
ties deliberately incurred. Life for the Puritan 
was a very serious affair, and levity a crime only 
milder than non-orthodoxy. Gaming even for 
amusement was rigidly prohibited. It was a 
criminal act to kiss a woman in the street, even 
in the way of chaste and honest salute. The heads 
of households were called to account if the 
daughters neglected the spinning-wheel. The 
stocks and the whipping-post were seldom unoc- 
cupied by minor offenders, while the hangman 
was kept busy with criminals of deeper dye. It 
should be needless to say that there was a good 
deal of hypocrisy, and that public repentance was 
often simply a means for escaping from social 
ostracism and obtaining admission to the pastures 
of the elect. Hubbard intimates as much in 
what he says about Captain John Underbill. 

The laws enacted were based on the Mosaic 
code, and of Mosaic severity in dealing with 
offences against morality and religion. It is to 
be remembered, however, that down to the second 
quarter of the present century the code of Eng- 
land itself was Draconic, although immoralities 
punished by death in Massachusetts were not 
regarded as crimes in the older country. 



The Land We Live In. 71 

The most painful event connected with the 
harsh religious system of the Puritans was the 
execution in 1659 of two Quakers, Marmaduke 
Stephenson and William Robinson, of England, 
who had come to Massachusetts to preach their 
doctrines. The first two Quakers to arrive in 
Boston were Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, who 
landed here in 1656. They were forthwith 
arrested, and examined for witch-marks, but 
none being found and there being no excuse 
therefore for putting them to death as agents of 
Satan, they were kept in close imprisonment, and 
the jailer and citizens were forbidden to give them 
any food, the object apparently being to starve 
them to death. The windows of the jail were 
boarded up to prevent food from being handed 
into them and also to prevent the prisoners from 
exhorting passers-by, A citizen named Upshall, 
who gave money to the jailer to buy nourishment 
for the captives, was fined |lioo, and ordered to 
leave the colony within thirty days, and was 
sentenced to pay beside ^15 for every da}^ he 
should be absent from public worship before his 
departure — evidently that he might be compelled 
to listen to pulpit denunciations of his wicked- 
ness in saving from starvation two fellow-human 
beings who worshipped God in a different fashion 
from their persecutors. The exile was denied an 
asylum in Plymouth, and followed the example 
of Roger Williams by seeking a refuge among 
the Indiarns, who treated him kindl3^ The two 
Quaker women were transported to Barbadoes, 
and the captain of the vessel which had brought 
them to Boston was required to bear the charges 
of their imprisonment. The religious books 
which they had in their possession when arrested 
were burned by the common hangman. 

The Quakers continued to come in considerable 
numbers to America, being welcomed in some 
of the colonies, and persecuted in others, but 



72 The Land We Live In. 

nowhere so severely as in Massachusetts. When 
Stephenson and Robinson were hanged at Boston, 
Mary Dyer, widow of William Dyer, late recorder 
of Providence plantations, was taken to the 
scaffold wath them, but reprieved on condition 
that she should leave the colony in forty-eight 
hours. In the following year Marj^ Dyer returned 
to Boston, and was at once arrested and hanged. 
These proceedings excited general horror in the 
mother country, and Charles II. sent a letter 
stating it to be his pleasure that the Quakers 
should be sent to England for trial. The General 
Court of Massachusetts thereupon suspended the 
laws against Quakers, and those in prison were 
released and sent out of the jurisdiction of 
Massachusetts. 



Next to the persecution of the Quakers no 
feature of Puritan history is so prominent as the 
Salem Witchcraft Tragedy, which, although it 
occurred near the close of the sreventeenth cen- 
tury, so strikingly illustrates the intellectual and 
religious conditions of the Massachusetts colony 
that it may properly be described here. Belief 
in witchcraft was not by any means confined to 
Massachusetts. The statutes of England, as well 
as of the American colonies, dealt with the 
imaginary crime. Among the intelligent and 
educated classes, however, both in Europe and 
America, the subject was generally considered of 
too doubtful a nature to be dealt w'ith by the in- 
fliction of the penalties w^hich the law prescribed. 
In Massachusetts, where everybody had some 
education, the majority of the people, although 
deeply and almost fanatically religious, had their 
doubts about the reality of the diabolical art, and 
the belief, strangely enough, seems to have been 
most intense and aggressive in the highest intel- 
lectual quarters, among ministers and men of 



The Land We Live In. 73 

superior education and commensurate influence. 
It was this that gave the witchcraft delusion its 
awful power for evil, and enabled a few vicious 
children afflicted with hysteria or epilepsy to 
bring a score of mostly reputable persons to an 
ignominious death, to ruin more than that num- 
ber of homes and to spread consternation through- 
out the commonwealth. 

The Salem delusion began in the house of Mr. 
Parris, the minister at Danvers. Parris had two 
slaves, an Indian and his wife, Tituba, the latter 
half negro and half Indian. Tituba taught the 
children various tricks. While practicing these 
tricks, some of them became h3^sterical and acted 
in a peculiar manner. It was suggested that 
they were bewitched, and they were asked who 
had bewitched them. They indicated a woman 
named Sarah Goode, who was generally disliked. 
She was arrested and imprisoned. This seems to 
have gratified the children, who soon after had 
convulsions in the presence of another victim, one 
Giles Corey. Corey stood mute under the accusa- 
tion, and was tortured to death by pressing. The 
cases attracted attention, and at the instance of 
Cotton Mather and others, Governor Phipps de- 
signated a special court to try persons accused of 
witchcraft. Malice, greed and craft promptly 
supplied more victims for the court and the 
hangman. Doctors discovered what they called 
witch-marks, such as moles or callosities of any 
kind, and after the children or others alleged to 
have been bewitched had performed the usual 
contortions, the accused were swiftly convicted. 
Francis Nourse and his wife, Rebecca, had a 
controversy about the occupation of a farm with 
a family named Kndicott. The Endicott chil- 
dren went into hysterics and charged that Re- 
becca Nourse had bewitched them. Although as 
good and pure a woman as there was in the 
colon}', Rebecca was convicted, hanged on 



74 The Land We Live l7t. 

Witches' Hill, and her body cast into a pit de- 
signed for those who should meet her fate. Mr. 
Parris, the minister, thought it necessary to 
preach a sermon fortifying the belief in witch- 
craft, and when Sarah Cloyse, a sister of Rebecca, 
got up and went out of the meeting-house, 
regarding the sermon as an insult to the memory- 
of her murdered sister, she was also denounced 
and arrested. The Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather, one 
of the lights of Puritanism, and son of Dr. 
Increase Mather, president of Harvard Univer- 
sity, was most active and violent in the prosecu- 
tions. Among the victims was the Rev. Stephen 
Burroughs, a learned minister of exemplary life, 
who was accused of possessing a witch's trumpet. 
Mather witnessed the hanging of Burroughs, and 
when the latter on the scaffold offered up a 
touching prayer, Mather cried out to the people 
that Satan often transformed himself into an angel 
of light to deceive men's souls. The Rev. Mr. 
Noyes, standing by at the execution of eight 
accused persons, exclaimed: "What a sad thing 
it is to see eight fire-brands of hell hanging 
there!" A committee was appointed to ferret out 
witches, and children w-ere readily found to court 
the notoriety and interest which a share in the 
work attracted. When the accusers began to 
utter charges against the wife of Governor Phipps 
and relatives of the Mathers, the authorities 
took a different view of the monster which 
they had evolved out of their superstitious 
imaginings. Public opinion, which had been 
fettered by fear and amazement at the hideous 
proceedings, began to find expression in protest 
against any further sacrifice. Many of the 
accusers recanted their testimony, and said that 
they had given it in order to save their own 
lives, dreading to be accused of witchcraft them- 
selves. The General Court of Massachusetts ap- 
pointed a general fast and supplication "that 



The Land We Live In. 75 

God would pardon all the errors of His servants 
and people in a late tragedy raised among them 
by Satan and his instruments. ' ' Judge Sewall, 
who had presided at a number of the trials, stood 
up in his place in the church and begged the 
people to pray that the errors which he had com- 
mitted "might not be visited by the judgment of 
an avenging God on his country, his family and 
himself. ' ' The Rev. Mr. Parris was compelled 
to leave the country. Cotton Mather, however, 
adhered steadfastly to his belief in witches. He 
said, among other things equally astounding to 
the common sense even of that day, that the 
devil allowed the victims of witchcraft to "read 
Quaker books, the Common Prayer and popish 
books," but not the Bible. At the instance of 
Cotton Mather, and that of his father. Increase 
Mather, the president of Harvard, a circular was 
sent out signed by Increase Mather and a number 
of other ministers in the name of Harvard Col- 
lege, inviting reports of "apparitions, posses- 
sions, enchantments and all extraordinary things 
wherein the existence and agency of the invisible 
world is more sensibly demonstrated, " to be used 
' ' as some fit assembly of ministers might direct. ' ' 
But few replies to the circular were received. 
The people of Massachusetts had muzzled the 
monster, and did not care to turn it loose again. 
A monument was recently erected to Rebecca 
Nourse on the hill where she perished, and her 
descendants have an organization which holds 
annual meetings in commemoration of their 
hapless ancestor. 



Notwithstanding harsh laws and their bitter 
enforcement, the habits of the people were prob- 
ably not much better than to-day in well-ordered 
communities, and considerable depravity existed, 
especially in the remoter settlements. Comer's 



76 The Land We Live lu. 

Diary, which has never been published, but 
which the writer of this work has examined in 
manuscript, shows a condition of society far from 
exemplary, and it also shows that persons whose 
position ought to have been respectable, some- 
times took Indians either as wives or in a less 
honorable relation. There is, perhaps, more 
Indian blood in New England than is generally 
supposed, and the earlier inhabitants of that 
section were probably less exclusive toward the 
aborigines than is assumed in conventional his- 
tory. Comer's Diary deals, it is true, with the 
early part of the eighteenth century, but the 
conditions it minutely and no doubt faithfull}'- 
describes, must have existed substantially in the 
seventeenth. * 



The laws of Rhode Island were founded on the 
Mosaic system, like those of Massachusetts, but 
entirely ignored the question of religion. The 
penalties for immoral conduct were not so merci- 
less as in the Puritan colonies, and the Rhode 
Island colonial records indicate that the laws, 
such as they were, were not rigidly enforced. 
The remnants of the Indian tribes, having first 
been demoralized by unprincipled whites, became 
themselves a demoralizing element, and Indian 
dances were, the records show, a continual source 
of scandal and of vice, which the authorities 
sought vainly to suppress. In connection with 
the principle of entire separation of Church and 
State, on which Rhode Island was founded, it 
maybe of interest to mention here that I learned, 



* I was present at a meeting of the Rhode Island Histori- 
cal Society when President (then professor) Andrews, of 
Brown University, reported in behalf of a committee, that 
it had been judged inexpedient to publish Comer's Diary. 
I have since had the privilege of examining the diarj' in the 
original, andean understand the grounds of objection.—H. M. 



The Land We Live In. 77 

in my examination of Comer's Diary, that an 
attempt was . made to establish a branch of the 
AngHcan Church in Providence, in the colonial 
period, and that a minister was sent over under 
authority of the bishop of London. The minister 
had to depart, and the church was closed on 
account of some scandal. I Wrote to the present 
bishop of London inquiring if there was any 
record of the incident in the Episcopal archives, 
and he answered me to the effect that nothing 
could be found relating to it. 



CHAPTER IX. 

New England Prospering— Outbreak of King Philip's War — 
Causes of the War— White or Indian Had to Go — Philip 
on the War-path— Settlements I^aid in Ashes— The Attack 
on Hadley — The Great Swamp Fight — Philip Renews the 
War More Fiercely Than Before — His Allies Desert Him — 
Betrayed and Killed— The Indians Crushed in New 
England. 

The civil war between Charles I. and the 
Parliament put an end to Puritan immigration to 
New England, and some of the settlers went back 
to England, and gave efficient aid to their fellow 
Puritans in fighting against the king. The 
people of New England were, on the whole, pros- 
perous about the middle of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. Nearly every head of a family owned his 
house and the land which he occupied, and in 
the coast towns many were engaged in profitable 
trade and the fisheries. Fishing vessels from 
abroad were customers for the agricultural pro- 
ducts of the colony, and gradually the colonists 
built their own vessels and absorbed the fisheries 
themselves. The figure of a codfish in the Massa- 
chusetts State House was, until recently, a 
reminder of the beginning of Massacliusett's 
wealth and prosperity. 



78 The Land We Live In. 

King Philip's War was a terrible blow to the 
colonies, and came near to proving their des- 
truction. The immediate provocation of the 
conflict was slight enough, but the conflict itself 
was inevitable. There was no longer room in 
New England for independent Indian tribes side 
by side with English colonies. One race or 
the other had to give way and war meant ex- 
termination for one or the other. King Philip, 
Sachem of the Wampanoags, saw that the further 
progress of the colonies would involve the extinc- 
tion of his race. He was a brave man, and 
possessed of uncommon ability. He did not 
move hastily, although his tribesmen clamored 
for bloodshed to avenge three of their fellows 
whom the English had hanged on a doubtful 
charge of murder, based on the killing of an 
Indian traitor. When Philip was prepared to 
strike he sent his women and children to the 
Narragansetts for protection, and then started on 
the warpath against the settlers of Ph'mouth 
colony. Major Savage, with horse and foot from 
Boston, joined the Plymouth forces, and they 
drove Philip back into a swamp at Pocasset. 
After a siege of many days Philip made his way 
from the swamp, was welcomed by the Nipmucks, 
a tribe in interior Massachusetts, and with fifteen 
hundred warriors he hurried to attack the white 
settlements in Connecticut. The colonial army 
meanwhile hastened to the Narragansett country-, 
and compelled Canonchet, chief of the Narragan- 
setts, upon whom King Philip had relied for aid, 
to make a treaty of friendship. Philip was disap- 
pointed by the loss of this expected ally, but 
disappointment made him only the more resolute 
and desperate. Everywhere he excited the New 
England tribes against the English, and carefully 
avoiding any general encounter, he waylaid the 
settlers, destroyed their homes and laid ambus- 
cades for them iu field and highway, now and 



The Land We Live In. 79 

then attacking some important town. The colo- 
nists suffered fearfully; numbers were slain; 
whole settlements were devastated, and the gun 
had to be kept at hand in church, at home and at 
daily toil. No one knew when the dusky foe 
would suddenly spring from the forest ; no woman 
left her doorstep without fear that she might 
never enter it again, and the settler, whom duty 
summoned from home, looked anxioiisly on his 
return to see if his dwelling was there. Even the 
churches, with congregations armed as they 
listened to the Word of God, were assailed and 
the worshipers sometimes massacred. Deerfield 
was laid in ashes, and Hadley was saved un- 
doubtedly by the sudden appearance of a vener- 
able man, William Goffe, the regicide, who had 
been a major-general under Cromwell, was one 
of the judges who signed the death warrant of 
Charles I., and had fled to New England from 
the vengeance of Charles II. He was concealed 
in Hadley when the Indians attacked the place, 
and unexpectedly appeared among the inhabi- 
tants, most of whom took him for a supernatural 
being, and animated them to repulse the savages. 
He then as suddenly disappeared, going back to 
his place of refuge. Philip, encouraged by his 
successes, made a bold attack upon Springfield, 
but was repulsed with serious loss. He then 
retreated to the Narragansett country, and was 
hospitably received b}'^ Canonchet. 

Although Canonchet' s sympathies were with 
Philip, it is not certain that the Narragansett 
chief had hostile designs against the English. 
The colonists had determined, however, to make 
a sweep of possible as well as actual enemies, and 
they marched upon the Narragansetts. Then 
occurred the Great Swamp fight, one of the most 
sanguinary of encounters in the history of Indian 
warfare. The Narragansetts had their winter 
camp, or fort, in the heart of a swamp, in what 



8o The Land ]]'c Live In. 

is now Charlestown, Rhode Island. Successive 
rows of palisades protected a position of consider- 
able extent, accessible during the greater part of 
the year by a single narrow path. This one 
access was guarded by a blockhouse, but the cold 
weather gave a footing to the invaders on the 
usually impassable morasses. An attempt was 
made to take the Narragansetts by surprise. The 
warriors, however, detected the stealthy approach, 
and seizing their weapons, fired from the security 
of their palisades upon the advancing enemy, A 
number of the best men on the colonial side were 
shot down while urging on the attack. The 
battle on both sides was fierce and stubborn. 
Assault followed assault, only to be repulsed, and 
when the English had fought their way into the 
fortress, they were at first driven out by an 
irresistible onset of the Indians. At length the 
colonists made good their entrance, and the battle 
continued at closer quarters, the Indians nerved 
to desperation by the presence of their wives and 
children, whose fate would be their own, and the 
colonists inspired to prodigies of valor by the 
thought that their defeat would certainly involve 
their own destruction, and perhaps that of New 
England. The invaders at length set fire to the 
wigwams. As the flames spread the women and 
children ran out, hampering their defenders with 
cries of terror and appeals for protection, and at 
length the Indians were overpowered. Then 
followed a pitiless massacre of the defeated 
Indians and their families, hundreds of whom 
perished in the flames, while many were taken 
prisoners to be carried off into slavery. Canon- 
chet was slain, and the power of the Narragan- 
setts was broken forever,"^ 



* In the summer of 18S3 I represented the Providence/t;?/;- 
nal at the dedication of Fort Ninigret, a spot set apart from 
the former Nanagansett reservation in memory of the tribe 
which had given welcome to Roger Williams when he fled 



The Land We Live In. 8r 

King Philip escaped from the slaughter, found 
other Indian allies, and renewed the war more 
fiercely than before. Many towns were laid in 
ashes, including Providence and Warwick, in 
Rhode Island ; Weymouth, Groton, Medfield, 
Lancaster and Marlborough, in Massachusetts. 



from Puritan persecution. I visited at the time the scene of 
the Great Swamp fight, and also the burying-ground of the 
latter Narragansett chiefs. 

The following lines which were suggested by the occa- 
sion, may perhaps be of interest to the reader : 

THE GRAVE OF NINIGRET. 

A stricken pine — a weed-grown mound 

On the upland's rugged crest, 
Point where the hunted Indian found 

At length a place of rest. 

Thou withered tree, by lightning riven. 

Of bark and leaf bereft. 
With lifeless arms erect to heaven, 

Of thee a remnant's left ; 

The bolt that broke thy giant pride 

Yet spared the sapling green ; 
And tall and stately by thy side 

'Twill show what thou hast been. 

But of the Narragansett race 

Nor kith, nor blood remains ; 
Save that perchance a tainted trace 

May lurk in servile veins. 

The mother's shriek, the warrior's yell 

That rent the midnight air 
When Christians made yon swamp a hell, 

No longer echo there. 

The cedar brake is yet alive — 

But not with human tread — 
Within its shade the plover thrive, 

The otter makes its bed. 

The red fox hath his hiding'-place 

Where ancient foxes ran. 
How keener than the sportsman's chase 

The hunt of man by man ! 

H. M. 

6 



82 The Land We Live Ln. 

About six hundred of the colonists were killed in 
battle or waylaid and murdered, and the burden 
of the struggle bore heavily on the survivors. 
Fortunately dissensions among the savages dimin- 
ished their power for harm, and Philip's allies 
deserted him, or surrendered to avoid starva- 
tion. Captain Church of Rhode Island went in 
pursuit of Philip who had taken refuge in the 
fastnesses of Mount Hope. The wife and little son 
of the Indian chief were made prisoners, and this 
was a final blow to him. ' ' My heart breaks, ' ' he 
said; "I am ready to die." An Indian, who 
claimed to have a grievance against Philip on 
account of a brother whom the sachem had 
killed, betrayed the hiding-place of Philip to the 
English, and shot the fallen chief. Philip's 
head was cut off and carried on a pole to Ply- 
mouth, and his body was quartered. His wife 
and son were sold into slavery in Bermuda. The 
Indians of New England were crushed, and they 
never again attempted to stand against the 
whites. 



CHAPTER X. 

Growth of New Netherland — Governor StU3^'esant's Des- 
potic Rule— His Comments on Popular Election— New- 
Amsterdam Becomes New York— The Planting of Marv- 
land— Partial Freedom of Conscience— Civil War in 
Maryland— The Carolinas— Settlement of North and South 
Carolina— The Bacon Rebellion in Virginia— Governor 
Berkeley's Vengeance. 

New Amsterdam prospered under methods of 
government which were mild as compared with 
those of the Puritans, although the annals of the 
Dutch colony are unhappily not free from the 
stain of persecution for conscience' sake. Eng- 
lishmen as well as Hollanders thronged to New 
Netherland, and the people, as they grew beyond 
anxiety for enough to eat and drink, became 



The Land We Live In. 83 

ambitious for a share in the government. In 1653, 
after much agitation and resistance on the part 
of Governor Stuyvesant, New Amsterdam was 
organized as a municipality, the power of the 
burghers being, however, very limited. 

The smaller Dutch towns possessed the privilege 
of electing their officers, though their choice was 
subject to the approval of the director-general. 
New Amsterdam had not been granted this privi- 
lege, although it had been demanded in 1642 and 
again in 1649. At last, in 1652, Governor Stuyves- 
ant was instructed to have a schout, two burgomas- 
ters and five schepens "elected according to the 
custom of the metropolis of Fatherland. ' ' He, 
however, continued for a long time to appoint 
municipal officers, and when a protest was made 
he replied that he had done so "for momentous 
reason." "For if," he said, "this rule was to 
become a synocure, if the nomination and elec- 
tion of magistrates were to be left to the populace 
who were the most interested, then each would 
vote for some one of his own stamp, the thief for 
a thief, the rogue, the tippler, the smuggler for 
a brother in iniquity, that he might enjoy greater 
latitude in his vices and frauds. ' ' The magis- 
trates had not been appointed contrary to the 
will of the people, because they were "proposed 
to the commonalty in front of the City Hall by 
their names and surnames, each in his quality, 
before they were admitted or sworn to office. 
The question is then put, ' Does any one object? ' * ' 
At length, in 1658, Stuyvesant allowed the burgo- 
masters and schepens to nominate their suc- 
cessors, but the city did not have a schout of its 
own until 1660. 

Other troubles besides the demands of the 
people for self-government, were gathering around 
the sturdy Dutch governor. The Knglish were 
pressing him from the east, and in New Netherland 
itself they were aggressive and defiant in their 



84 The Land We Live Ln. 

attitude toward Dutch authority. Charles II. 
granted New Netherland to his brother, the Duke 
of York, and an English flotilla under Richard 
Nicholls appeared in front of New Amsterdam 
and demanded the surrender of the province. 
Stuyvesant refused to submit, but the people of 
New Amsterdam were more than willing to come 
under English rule, and their doughty governor 
was made to understand that he would be virtu- 
ally alone in resisting the invaders. After a 
week of fuming and raging against the inevi- 
table, Stuyvesant yielded, and the English took 
possession of New Amsterdam. The place was 
recaptured and held by the Dutch for a few 
months in 1673, but with the exception of this 
brief period the English remained thenceforth 
masters of the Atlantic coast of North America 
from the St. Lawrence in the north to the Spanish 
possessions in the south. 



The planting of a Roman Catholic colony in 
Maryland was almost contemporary with the 
Puritan settlement of New England. The first 
steps toward the establishment of the colony had 
been taken under James I. , but it was in the 
reign of Charles I. that Cecil Calvert, the second 
Lord Baltimore, obtained the charter which made 
him almost an independent sovereign over one of 
the fairest regions of North America. The 
charter granted civil and religious liberty to 
Christians who believed in the Trinity. The 
Ark and the Dove, two vessels fitted out by 
Lord Baltimore, bore about two hundred Roman 
Catholic immigrants to the banks of the Potomac, 
where they landed on March 25, 1634. The cross 
was planted as the emblem of the new colony, 
and Governor Leonard Calvert opened negotia- 
tions with the Indians for the purchase of their 
lands. The first assembly met in 1635, and 



The Land We Live In. 85 

another in 1638, Question having arisen as to 
whether the lord proprietor or the colonists had 
the right to propose laws, that right was at length 
conceded to the colonists. Of course the settlers 
would not have been allowed to persecute non- 
Catholics, even had they so desired ; but they 
showed no such desire, and laws were enacted 
securing freedom of worship to all professing to 
believe in Jesus Christ; with the important 
limitation, however, of severe penalties for alleged 
blasphemy. This limitation clearly made it pos- 
sible for magistrates to construe an honest expres- 
sion of religious opinion as blasphemy, and to 
inflict the cruel punishments provided for that 
offence. It should be noticed that the Toleration 
Act of Maryland, passed in 1649, was the work 
of a General Assembly composed of sixteen Pro- 
testants and eight Roman Catholics, the governor 
(William Stone) himself being a Protestant. 
Some years later the Puritans, being in a major- 
ity in the Maryland General Assembly, passed an 
act disfranchising Roman Catholics and mem- 
bers of the Church of England. Civil war 
followed, resulting in a defeat for the Roman 
Catholics near Providence, now called Annapolis, 
April, 1655. Lord Baltimore, whose authority 
was overthrown in the course of the conflict, 
recovered his rights when the monarchy was re- 
stored in England. The government of the Bal- 
timores continued, with some interruptions, until 
the Revolution, and it is but fair to state that the 
character which they stamped upon the colony 
was nob effaced even by that event. 



The Puritans nearly succeeded in adding North 
Carolina to their chain of colonies. The first 
settlers, after the ill-fated Raleigh expeditions of 
the previous century, were Presbyterian refugees 
from persecution at Jamestown, who, led by 



86 The Land We Live Ln. 

Roger Green, settled on the Chowan, near the 
site of Edenton. These were joined by other 
dissenters who had found the religious atmosphere 
of Virginia uncomfortable, and Puritans from 
New England landed at the Cape Fear River in 
1661, and bought lands from the Indians. The 
soil and climate were admirably suited for suc- 
cessful colonization, and North Carolina might 
have proved a southern New England but for the 
hunger for vast American domains which just 
then possessed the courtiers of Charles II. In view 
of the notorious depravity of that merry monarch's 
surroundings it seems ludicrous to read that the 
grantees obtained Carolina under the pretence of 
a "pious zeal for the propagation of the gospel 
among the heathen, " The list included the Earl 
of Clarendon, General George Monk, to whom 
Charles owed, in a large degree, his restoration 
to the throne ; Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, after- 
ward Earl of Shaftesbury; Sir John Colleton, 
Lord Craven, Sir George Carteret and Lord John 
Berkeley and his brother, then Governor of Vir- 
ginia. It is related that, "when the petitioners 
presented their memorial, so full of pious preten- 
sions, to King Charles in the garden of Hampton 
Court, the 'merrie monarch,' after looking each 
in the face a moment, burst into loud laughter, 
in which his audience joined heartily. Then 
taking up a little shaggy spaniel, with large, 
meek eyes, and holding it at arm's length before 
them, he said, 'Good friends, here is a model of 
piety and sincerit}^ which it might be wholesome 
for you to copy. ' Then tossing it to Clarendon, 
he said, ' There, Hyde, is a worthy prelate ; make 
him archbishop of the domain which I shall give 
you. ' With grim satire Charles introduced into 
the preamble of the charter a statement that the 
petitioners, 'excited with a laudable and pious 
zeal for the propagation of the gospel, have 
begged a certain country in the parts of America 



The Land We Live In. 87 

not yet cultivated and planted, and onh' inhabited 
by some barbarous people who have no knowl- 
edge of God. ' ' ' 

The Puritans, already settled in North Caro- 
lina, had no desire to take part in the propagation 
of the gospel in the fashion which prevailed 
among the courtiers of Charles II,, and most of 
those who were frotn New England abandoned 
their North Carolina plantations. Governor Ber- 
keley, of Virginia, extended his authority over 
the remainder, and made William Drummond, a 
Scotch Presbyterian, who had been settled in Vir- 
ginia, administrator of the Chowan colony. 
Emigrants from Barbadoes bought land from the 
Indians near the site of Wilmington, and founded 
a prosperous settlement with Sir John Yeamans 
as governor. Other emigrants from England, led 
by Sir William Sayle and Joseph West, entered 
Port Royal Sound, and landed at Beaufort Island 
in 1671. They soon deserted Beaufort and planted 
themselves on the Ashley River, a few miles 
above the site of Charleston. In December, 1671, 
fifty families and a large number of slaves arrived 
from the Barbadoes. Carolina, about this time, 
had a narrow escape from being made the subject 
of a grotesque feudal constitution conceived by 
John Locke, the philosopher, and approved by 
the Earl of Shaftesbury. This constitution pro- 
posed to inflict on the infant colony a system of 
titled aristocracy as elaborate as that of Germany. 
The good sense of the colonists repelled the ab- 
surd scheme, and saved Carolina from being a 
laughing stock for the nations. In 1680, the 
settlers on Ashley River moved to Oyster Point, 
at the junction of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, 
and laid the foundation of Charleston. 

Meantime Virginia was the scene of a memor- 
able struggle between the aristocrats and the 
people, the royalists led by the Governor, Sir 



88 The Land We Live Ln. 

William Berkeley, and the republicans marshaled 
by Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy lawyer, deeply 
attached to the popular cause. The character of 
Berkeley can best be judged by a communication 
which he sent to England in 1665 : "I thank God 
there are no free schools nor printing in Virginia, 
and I hope we shall not have them these hundred 
years ; for learning has brought heresy and dis- 
obedience and sects into the world, and printing 
hath divulged them and libels against the best 
government; God keep us from both!" It is 
not strange that a man who felt like this should 
have cared but little for the safety and welfare of 
the common people. He himself reveled in 
riches, accumulated at the cost of the colony, 
and he had in sympathy with him the large land- 
holders, who sought to imitate in their Virginia 
mansions the pomp and circumstance of the 
English nobility, while they looked down on the 
mass of poor whites as vassals and inferiors. The 
immediate provocation for the so-called Bacon 
Rebellion was the failure of Governor Berkeley 
to protect the settlers from Indian depredations, 
the governor having a monopol}' of the fur-trade, 
and being inclined by motives of self-interest to 
propitiate the savages. An armed force assembled 
and chose Bacon as their leader. Thej^ first re- 
pulsed the Indians, and then demanded from the 
governor a commission for Bacon as commander- 
in-chief of the Virginia militar}'. Berkeley, al- 
though urged by the newly-elected House of 
Burgesses, which was in sympathy with the 
people, to grant the commission, for some time 
hesitated, but at length consented. Bacon 
marched against the Indians, and Berkeley pro- 
claimed him a traitor. This hostile action of the 
governor excited Bacon and his followers, in 
whose numbers were included many of the best 
men in the colony, to an open and resolute stand 
for the rights of the people. Berkeley fled to 



The Land We Live In. 89 

the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay, and sought 
to raise an army to maintain his authority. He 
proclaimed that the slaves of all rebels were to 
be free; he aroused the Indians to join him, and 
several English ships were placed at his service. 
With this following the governor went back to 
Jamestown, and again proclaimed Bacon a traitor. 
The popular leader hastened to accept the chal- 
lenge, and at the head of a considerable force of 
republicans, he appeared before Jamestown. Ber- 
keley's mercenaries refused to fight, and stole 
away under cover of night, Berkeley being 
obliged to accompany them in order to avoid 
being made a prisoner. Jamestown was burned 
by the republicans, all the colony, except the 
eastern shore acknowledged Bacon's authority, 
and the success of the insurrection seemed as- 
sured when the popular leader fell a victim to 
malignant fever. Without his genius and energy 
to guide the cause of liberty, it rapidly declined, 
and Berkeley returned and soon succeeded in re- 
establishing his authority. He made Williams- 
burg the capital of the colony, instead of James- 
town, which never rose from its ruins — a fact 
hardly to be regretted, as the site was decidedly 
unhealthy. Berkeley had no mercy on the now 
submissive insurgents. Bacon's chief lieutenant 
had been the brave Scotch Presbyterian, W^illiam 
Drummond, the first governor of North Carolina. 
When Drummond was brought before him the 
governor said : ' ' You are very welcome ; I am 
more glad to see you than any man in Virginia; 
you shall be hanged in half an hour. ' ' Drum- 
mond calmly answered : " I expect no mercy from 
you. I have followed the lead of my conscience, 
and done what I could to rescue my country from 
oppression. ' ' Drummond was executed about 
three hours later, and his devoted wife, Sarah, 
who had taken an active part in urging the 
people to defend their rights, and who had in 



90 



The Land We Live In. 



her the spirit of the mothers of the Revolution, 
was banished with her children to the wilderness. 
A wife who offered herself as a victim in place 
of her husband, claiming that she had urged him 
to rebellion, was repulsed with coarse and brutal 
insult, and the husband was led to the gallows. 
Twenty-two in all were executed before Ber- 
keley's vengeance was satiated. Charles II. 
heard with indignation of the sacrilice of life, 
exclaiming: "The old fool has taken more lives 
in that naked country than I have taken for the 
murder of my father. ' ' Berkeley was recalled to 
England in 1677. But for the presence of the 
fleet and troops of Sir John Berry, sent over by 
the king to maintain the royal authority, Berkeley 
might have been subjected to violence by the 
colonists who fired guns and lighted bonfires to 
show their joy over his departure. Upon Berke- 
ley's arrival in England he found himself equally 
an object there of public hatred and contempt on 
account of his cruelties, and he died in July of 
the same year of grief and mortification. 



CHAPTER XL 

The Colonj' of New York— New Jersey Given Away to 
Favorites— Charter of Liberties and Franchises— The 
Dougan Charter— Beginnings of New York City Govern- 
ment-King James Driven from Power— Leisler Leads a 
Popular Movement— The Aristocratic Element Gains the 
Upper Hand— Jacob Leisler and Milborne Executed— 
Struggle For Liberty Continues. 

The colony of New York, so called after James, 
the Duke of York and brother of King Charles 
II., came into English hands at a fortunate time, 
and after a fortunate experience. Owing to 
Dutch occupation during half a century of in- 
tense agitation, civil war and revolution. New 
Netherland had escaped being drawn into the 



The Land We Live Ln. 91 

maelstrom of English hates and rivalries. In- 
deed the Dutch settlements, and New Amsterdam 
in particular, had derived advantage from the 
troubles of the English colonies, and among the 
immigrants who sought an asylum from Puritan 
intolerance within New Netherland jurisdiction 
were many who proved valuable additions to the 
])Opulation of the province, and who helped to 
build up its trade and commerce, and to develop 
agriculture. The Duke of York, therefore, en- 
tered upon possession of a colony with the ac- 
cumulated prosperity of about fifty years as the 
substantial foundation for future progress, and 
with a population which, while composed of 
diverse nationalities, retained the better features 
of them all. The settlers of New York, both 
Dutch and English, were, as a rule, attentive to 
religious duties; but they did not regard religion 
as the single aim of existence. They were mer- 
chants and traders and farmers, liberal for their 
age in their views of religious freedom, and de- 
voting their best energies to building up their 
worldly fortunes. New Amsterdam was in no 
sense Puritan — it was a respectable, thriving, 
trading and bartering community, with flourishing 
farms in the outskirts, and a commerce stunted 
by jealous restrictions, but which gave promise 
of future development.* 

The Duke of York at first made poor use of his 
new possessions. He astonished Colonel Richard 
Nicolls, who had conquered the territory for him 
without firing a shot, by giving away to two 
favorites, Lord Berkele}', brother of the Governor 
of Virginia, and Sir George Carteret, the rich 

*The Rev. John Miller, in 1695, speaks of " the wicked- 
ness and irrehgiou of the inhabitants, which abounds in all 
parts of the province, and appears in so many shapes, con- 
stituting so many sorts of sin, that I can scarce tell which 
to begin withal." The reverend gentleman was probably 
prejudiced. 



92 The Land We Live In. 

domain between the Hudson and Delaware, which 
received the name of New Jersey, and for many 
years that province was a theatre of dissensions 
traceable to the autocratic and reckless course of 
the Duke. The rights of settlers who had pre- 
ceded the proprietary government were ignored, 
and an attempt made to reduce freeholders to the 
position of tenants. A large immigration of 
Quakers from England a few years after the 
Dutch surrender added a valuable element to the 
population, in which the Puritans, apart from 
the Dutch, had predominated. Puritans and 
Quakers seemed to get along very well in the 
Jerseys, and with good government on the part 
of the proprietors the colony would doubtless 
have flourished. That for a number of years the 
Jerseys remained law-abiding and comparatively 
tranquil without a regular civil government 
attests the excellent character of the people. 

The Duke of York showed more wisdom in the 
management of his greater province of New 
York. In 1683 he instructed his governor, 
Thomas Dongan, to call a representative assem- 
bly, which met in the fort at New York. The 
assembly adopted an act called "The Charter of 
Liberties and Franchises," which was approved, 
first by the governor, and afterward by the 
duke. This charter declared that the power to 
pass laws should reside in the governor, council 
and people met in general assembly ; that every 
freeholder and freeman should be allowed to vote 
for representatives without restraint; that no 
freeman should suffer but by judgment of his 
peers ; that all trials should be by a jury of twelve 
men ; that no tax should be levied without the 
consent of the Assembly ; that no seaman or 
soldier should be quartered on the inhabitants 
against their will ; that there should be no mar- 
tial law, and that no person professing faith in 
God by Jesus Christ should be disquieted or 



The Land We Live In. 93 

questioned on account of religion. Two years later 
James, now become king, virtually abrogated this 
charter by levying direct taxes on New York 
without the consent of the people, by prohibiting 
the introduction of printing, and otherwise as- 
suming arbitrary power. He did not, however, 
suppress the General Assembly, which became, 
as years advanced and the colony grew in import- 
ance, more and more resolute in asserting the 
people's rights. 

Governor Dongau did all in his power to de- 
fend the interests of the province against the 
aggressions of the crown, and to secure some 
degree of self-government for those who bore the 
burdens of government. In 1686 the Dongan 
charter gave to the lieutenant-governor the power 
of appointing the mayor and sheriff of New York 
city, but an alderman, an assistant and a con- 
stable were to be chosen for each ward by a 
majority of the inhabitants of that ward. During 
his short lease of power Leisler issued warrants 
for the election of the mayor and sheriff by ' ' all 
Protestant freeholders." The resulting election 
was a farce, as only seventy of the inhabitants 
voted. The illegality of this action in defiance 
of the provisions of the Dongan charter was one 
of the chief causes of complaint against Leisler, 
The Montgomery charter, granted to New York 
in 1730, authorized the election of one alderman, 
an assistant, two assessors, one collector and two 
constables in each ward. The charter of Albany 
was granted by Governor Dongan in 1686, and it 
resembled in many respects the instrument under 
which the cit}^ of New York was first organized. 
It provided that six aldermen, six assistant alder- 
men, constables and other magistrates, should be 
chosen annually. The mayor, as well as the 
sheriff, was appointed by the governor. Gov- 
ernor Dongan's reluctance to fall in with the 
despotic and reactionary policy of King James 



94 The Land We Live Ln. 

led to his being dismissed from office in 1688, 
when Andros took his place. 

The tyrannical conduct of James II. and of his 
representatives in America, alienated the people 
of New York from that sovereign, and the news 
of his downfall was received with delight, espe- 
cially as nearly all the people were Protestants. 
The aristocratic element was inclined, notwith- 
standing the news, to uphold the government 
established by James, but the common or demo- 
cratic element resolved to drive out the repre- 
sentatives of the late king, and create a temporary 
government in sympathy with the revolution. 
Jacob Leisler, a distinguished Huguenot mer- 
chant, and senior captain of the military com- 
panies, was induced to lead a revolt. A com- 
mittee of safety, consisting of ten members, 
Dutch, Huguenots and English, made Leisler 
commander-in-chief until orders should arrive 
from William and Mary, the new sovereigns of 
England, Sir Francis Nicholson, the acting 
governor under Sir Edmund Andros, departed 
for England, and the members of his council to 
Albany, and denounced Leisler as an arch-rebel. 
Leisler sent an account of his proceedings to 
King William, and called an assembly to provide 
means for carrying on war against the French in 
Canada, King William paid no attention to 
Leisler's message, and commissioned Colonel 
Henry Sloughter governor of New York, and sent 
a company of regular soldiers, under Captain 
Ingoldsby, to the province. Leisler proclaimed 
Sloughter' s appointment, but refused to surrender 
the fort to Ingoldsby, A hostile encounter fol- 
lowed, in wiiich some lives were lost. The 
aristocratic element succeeded, upon Sloughter' s 
arrival, in obtaining an ascendancy over him, 
and Leisler and his son-in-law, Milborne, were 
arrested on charges of treason. They were tried 
and convicted by a packed court, and Sloughter 



The Land We Live I?i. 95 

was induced, while drunk at a banquet given by 
Leisler's enemies, to sign the death warrants. 
For fear the governor would repent of his act 
when sober, both men were torn away from their 
weeping families to the scaffold, A number of 
L/cisler's enemies were assembled to witness his 
death, while a crowd of the common people, who 
regarded him as their champion and a martyr for 
their cause, looked sullenly on. Milborne saw 
his bitter foe, Robert Livingston, in the throng, 
and exclaimed: "Robert Livingston, for this I 
will implead thee at the bar of God!" The 
execution of Leisler aroused strong indignation 
both in America and England, and some years 
later the attainder placed upon them was removed 
by act of Parliament, and their estates restored to 
their families. Leisler's soul, like that of John 
Brown, marched on while his body was molder- 
ing in the grave. The spirit which he infused, 
and the love of liberty to which he gave expres- 
sion, could not be eradicated by his tragic death. 
The people continued the struggle in assembly 
after assembly for the people's rights, and reso- 
lutely upheld freedom of speech and of the press 
in the legislative hall and the jury box. 



CHAPTER XII. 

William Perm's Model Colony — Sketch of the Founder of 
Pennsj'lvania — Comparative Humanity of Quaker Laws — 
Modified Freedom of Religion — An Early Liquor Law — 
Oflfences Against Morality Severely Punished— White 
Servitude — Debtors Sold Into Bondage — Georgia Founded 
as an Asylum for Debtors — Oglethorpe Repulses the 
Spaniards — Georgia a Royal Province. 

Founded on principles of equity by a man who 
was eminently a lover of his kind, Pennsylvania 
stood forth as a model colony, an ample and 
hospitable refuge for the oppressed of every clime. 



96 The La7id We Live hi. 

William Penn believed in the Golden Rule, and 
he sought to establish a state in which that rule 
would be the fundamental law. Instead of stern 
justices growing fat on the fees of litigation, he 
would have peace-makers in every county. He 
would treat the Indian as of the same flesh and 
blood as the white, and would live on terms of 
amity with red men embittered against the in- 
vaders of their lands by many years of unjust 
encroachment and cruel oppression. His object, 
Penn declared in his advertisement of Pennsyl- 
vania, was to establish a just and righteous gov- 
ernment in the province that would be an 
example for others.' He proposed that his gov- 
ernment should be a government of law, with the 
people a party to the making of laws. None, he 
declared, should be molested or prejudiced in 
matters of faith and worship, and nobody should 
be compelled at any time to frequent or maintain 
any religious place of worship or ministry what- 
soever. Trial by jury was guaranteed ; the person 
of an Indian was to be as sacred as that of a 
white man, and in any issue at law in which an 
Indian should be concerned, one half the jury 
was to be composed of Indians. 

William Penn was well known both in Eng- 
land and on the Continent when he received, in 
1681, his grant of Pennsylvania from Charles II. 
in discharge of a debt of about eighty thousand 
dollars, due by the crown to Penn's father. Ad- 
miral Sir William Penn. The proprietor of 
Pennsylvania had suffered in the cause of relig- 
ious liberty and reform. He had been confined 
in the Tower for writing heretical pamphlets, 
and been prosecuted for preaching in the streets 
of London. He had traveled in Holland and 
Germany as a self-appointed missionary of the 
Society of Friends, and had not spared his own 
ease in pleading the cause of persecuted Quakers 
everywhere. When, therefore, he proposed to 



The Land We Live In. 97 

found a colony in America, his name alone was 
enough to attract a host of followers. Many im- 
migrants flocked to Pennsylvania even before 
Penn himself had arrived there, and the settlers 
of Delaware, who had been anxious as to their 
future under the charter of the Duke of York, 
gladly came under the rule of one whose name 
was a synonym of equity. Under a spreading 
elm the Indians met the proprietor of Pennsyl- 
vania, and made a covenant with him that was 
equally just to the white man and to the native — 
a covenant which, it is said, was never forgotten 
by the aborigines. 

Nothing is more significant of the spirit and 
the motives which guided the early settlers than 
the humanity of their laws, as compared with the 
code of Kngland. The humane and enlightened 
sentiment as expressed in legislation, was not 
peculiar to Pennsylvania. In Rhode Island, also, 
that other colony founded on the principle of 
religious liberty, the first spontaneous code en- 
acted by the exiles was more than a century in 
advance of European ideas and statutes, and in 
Rhode Island, as in Pennsylvania, the ideal was 
compelled to give way to the hard and practical 
pressure of dominating English influence, and of 
contact with the rougher sort of mankind, 
attracted to these shores by the hope of gain or 
the fear of punishment at home. 

The Quakers began by proclaiming a modified 
freedom of religion. They declared, "That no 
person now, or at any time hereafter, dwelling 
or residing within this province, who shall pro- 
fess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, 
His only Son, and in the Holy Spirit, one God 
blessed for Evermore, and shall acknowledge the 
Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to 
be given by Divine Inspiration, and, when law- 
fully required, shall profess and declare that they 
will live peaceably under the civil government, 



98 The Land We Live Ln. 

shall in any case be molested or prejudiced for 
his or her conscientious persuasion, nor shall he 
or she be at any time compelled to frequent or 
maintain any religious worship, place or ministry 
whatsoever, contrary to his or her mind, but 
shall freely and fully enjoy his or her Christian 
liberty in all respects, without molestation or 
interruption." Of course this manifestly ex- 
cluded unbelievers in the Trinity, and left a door 
open for controversy as to what books were in- 
cluded in the Sacred Scriptures. Furthermore, 
the law against blasphemy might easily have 
been used as a weapon of persecution, providing, 
as it did, that whoever should " despitefully 
blaspheme or speak loosely and profanely of Al- 
mighty God, Christ Jesus, the Holy Spirit or the 
Scriptures of Truth, and is legally convicted 
thereof, shall forfeit and pay the sum of ten 
pounds for the use of the poor of the county 
vv'here such offence shall be committed, or suffer 
three months imprisonment at hard labor. ' ' 

Practically, however, entire freedom of worship 
existed in Pennsylvania. The same liberal spirit 
breathed through the Quaker code, while at the 
same time due care was taken to protect the 
morals of the people. 

In view of the severe liquor law now in force 
in Pennsylvania, it may be of interest to recall 
an early enactment regulating the traffic. It was 
provided in 1709, that "For preventing of dis- 
orders and the mischiefs that may happen by 
multiplicity of public houses of entertainment, 
Be it enacted. That no person or persons whatso- 
ever, within this province, shall hereafter have 
or keep any public inn, tavern, ale-house, 
tippling-house or dram shop, victualling or pub- 
lic house of entertainment in any county of this 
province, or in the City of Philadelphia, unless 
such person or persons shall first be recommended 
by the justices in the respective County Courts, 



The Land We Live Ln. 99 

and the said city, in their Quarter Sessions or 
Court of Record for the said counties and cities 
respectively, to the lyieutenant-Governor for the 
time being, for his license for so doing, under 
the penalty of five pounds." Tavern keepers 
permitting disorder in their places of entertain- 
ment were subject to revocation of license. 

There was a marked disposition in those days 
to visit with severity offences against morality, 
especially when the detected culprits were 
females; though males were not spared when 
suflBcient proof could be brought of their guilt. 
A woman concealing the birth of a child, found 
dead, and evidently born alive, was held to be 
guilty of murder, unless she could prove that the 
death was not her doing. This unjust presump- 
tion remained in force for many years, until, 
under the influence of kinder and Christian sen- 
timent, the law was changed, the burden of proof 
placed upon the prosecution and the presumption 
of innocence extended to the defendant. The 
penalty for violating the marriage obligation was 
the lash; the letter "A" being branded on the 
forehead for the third offence. A singular pro- 
vision of law was that a married woman having 
a child when her husband had been one year 
absent, should be punished as a criminal, but to 
be exempt from punishment if she should prove 
that her husband had been within the period 
stated "in some of the Queen's colonies or 
plantations on this continent, between the 
easternmost parts of New England and the 
southernmost parts of North Carolina. " 

The penalties inflicted on servants point in a 
remarkable manner to the w^onderful advance in 
the condition of menial and common laborers 
within the past hundred years. Pennsylvania, 
in the treatment of the laborer, was at least as 
lenient as any other colony, but the laws of the 
time appear hideously harsh and oppressive to us 



loo The Land We Live Ln. 

of to-day. The early colonial statutes provided 
that, "For the just encouragement of servants in 
the discharge of their duty, and the prevention 
of their deserting their master's or owner's ser- 
vice, be it enacted, that no servant bound to 
serve his or her time in this province, shall be 
sold or disposed of to any person residing in any 
other province or government without the consent 
of said servant, and two justices of the peace of 
the county wherein such servant lives or is sold, 
under the penalty of ten pounds to be forfeited 
by the seller. ' ' What a picture this conjures up 
of some poor, orphaned and half -starved colonial 
Oliver Twist, dragged by his master into the 
presence of pompous justices, and frowned into 
a hesitating consent to exchange the evils with 
which he was familiar for a fate whose wretched- 
ness he knew not of ! 

Ten shillings was to be paid for returning a 
runaway servant, if captured within ten miles of 
the servant's abode; if over ten miles, then the 
sum of twenty shillings was to be paid to the 
captor on delivery of the fugitive to the sheriff, 
the master to pay, in addition to the reward, five 
shillings prison fees, and all other disbursements 
and charges. The penalty for concealing a run- 
away servant was twenty shillings, and any one 
purchasing any goods from a servant without the 
consent of the master or mistress was fined treble 
the value of the goods, to the use of the owner, 
' ' and the servant, if a white, shall make satis- 
faction to his or her master or owner by servitude 
after the expiration of his or her time, to double 
the value of said goods, and if the servant be a 
black, he or she shall be severely whipped in the 
most public place in the township in which such 
offence was committed. ' ' 

It may be seen from the above that common 
labor up to the time of the Revolution was virtu- 
ally that of serfs, without discrimination of color 



The Land We Live In. loi 

or nativity. The supply of such labor came 
largely from Great Britain and Ireland, and to 
some extent from the other colonies and from 
Africa. Poor debtors also were sold into ser- 
vitude, a law of 1705 providing that "debtors 
should make satisfaction by servitude not exceed- 
ing seven years, if a single person and under the 
age of fifty, and three years or five years if a 
married man, and under the age of fort5'-six 
years. ' ' What the family of the married debtor 
were to do for a living while he was in servitude, 
legislation failed to suggest. Probably, in many 
instances, they were glad to accompany the hus- 
band and father into serfdom. Warrants could not 
be served on Sunday, one day of the seven being 
reserved when the wretched debtor might rest in 
security, and the hunted criminal forget that he 
was outlawed. 



While other colonies were founded as places of 
refuge for Christians oppressed on account of 
their religion, Georgia had its origin in the 
humane desire of General James Edward Ogle- 
thorpe to establish an asylum for poor debtors, 
with whom the prisons of England were over- 
crowded, the colony also to be a haven for the 
Protestants of Germany and other continental 
States. The proprietors of the Carol inas surren- 
dered their charters to the crown in 1729, and 
King George II. was, therefore, free to grant, 
June 9, 1732, a charter for a corporation for 
twenty-one years "in trust for the poor," to 
found a colony in the disputed territory south of 
the Savannah, to be called Georgia, in honor of 
the king. The trustees, appointed by the crown, 
possessed all the power both of making and ex- 
ecuting laws. The people of Charleston, South 
Carolina, gave welcome to Oglethorpe and his 
immigrants, for South Carolina had been greatly 



I02 The Land We Live In. 

harassed by the Spaniards to the south, and by 
the powerful tribes of Indians who occupied a 
large portion of the proposed colony. General 
Oglethorpe laid the foundation of the future 
State on the site of Savannah, and notwithstand- 
ing grievous restrictions on the ownership of 
land, the colony attracted many settlers from 
England, Scotland and Germany. The Span- 
iards invaded Georgia in 1742 with a fleet of 
thirty-five vessels from Cuba and a land force 
three thousand strong. Oglethorpe had but a 
small body of troops, chiefly Scotch Highlanders, 
but by courage and strategy he inflicted a 
sanguinary defeat on the Spaniards at the place 
called the ' ' Bloody Marsh. ' ' Ten years later, in 
1742, Georgia became a royal province, and 
secured the liberties enjoyed by other American 
provinces under the crown. 



SECO N D PERIOD. 
The Struggle for Empire. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

struggle for Empire in North America— The Vast Regiotz 
Called Louisiaua — War Between England and France — 
New England Militia Besiege Quebec— Frontenac Strikes 
the Iroquois— The Capture of L,ouisburg— The Forks of 
the Ohio — George Washington's Mission to the French — 
Braddock's Defeat— Washington Prevents Utter Disaster- 
Barbarous Treatment of Prisoners. 

The closing years of the seventeenth century 
witnessed the beginning of the struggle between 
France and England for empire in North 
America. Marquette, Joliet and La Salle won 
for France by daring exploration a nominal title 
to the Mississippi Valley, and La Salle assumed 
possession of the great river and its country in 
the name of Louis XIV. , after whom he called 
the region Louisiana. It was a vast dominion 
indeed that was thus claimed for the House of 
Bourbon without a settlement and with hardly 
an outpost to make any real show of sovereignty. 
Even had the expulsion of James II. from the 
English throne not hastened an outbreak between 
England and France, the conflict would have 
been inevitable. The war began in 1689, and 
with intervals of peace and sometimes in spite of 
peace the contest continued, until 1763, with 
varying fortunes, but ultimately resulting in the 
complete overthrow of the French. The Iroquois 
stood firmly by the English, while the French 
and their Indian allies repeated the scenes of 
King Philip's War on the frontiers, and often. 

(103) 



I04 The Land We Live In. 

far in the interior of New York and New Eng- 
land. The people of the British colonies did not 
look only to Great Britain for defence. They 
defended themselves, and even carried war into 
the enemy's country-. In 1690, two thousand 
Massachusetts militia, led by Sir William Phipps, 
sailed up the St. Lawrence and laid siege to 
Quebec, while another force, composed of New 
York and Connecticut troops, advanced from 
Albany upon Montreal. These expeditions were 
unsuccessful. In 1693, Count Frontenac, Gov- 
ernor of Canada, invaded the country of the 
Iroquois and inflicted crushing blows upon that 
once powerful confederacy, whose prowess had 
been felt before the arrival of the white man, as 
far as Tennessee in the South and Illinois in the 
West. Notwithstanding the able generalship of 
Frontenac the English made steady progress in 
the annexation of French territory. British and 
colonial troops conquered Nova Scotia, and the 
treaty of Utrecht in 1713 recognized England as 
the owner, not only of Nova Scotia, but also of 
Newfoundland and the Hudson Bay region. The 
French, however, strengthened their hold upon 
the interior of the continent, and established a 
series of fortified posts connecting the Mississippi 
Valley with the Great Lakes. Kaskaskia was 
founded in 1695, Cahokia in 1700, Detroit 1701 
and Vincennes 1705. Bienville founded the city 
of New Orleans in 17 18. 

The capture of Louisburg, in 1746, was the 
most important military achievement of the Eng- 
lish colonists in America, previous to the Revo- 
lution. The French built the fortress soon after 
the treaty of Utrecht, and spared no expense to 
make it formidable. The project to drive the 
French out of the place was entirely of colonial 
origin. Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, 
proposed the expedition to the legislature of the 
colony, and the members of that body hesitated 



The Land We Live In. 105 

at first to enter upon an undertaking apparently 
so hazardous and almost hopeless. After discus- 
sion the necessary authority was granted by a 
majority of one. A circular-letter, asking for 
assistance, was then sent to all the colonies as far 
south as Pennsylvania. New York, New Jersey 
and Pennsylvania contributed considerable sums 
of money, and Governor Clinton, of New York, 
sent also provisions and cannon. Roger Wolcott 
led five hundred men from Connecticut and 
Rhode Island and New Hampshire each sent 
three hundred men. The remainder of the force 
of 3250 men was enlisted in Massachusetts, that 
colony also providing ten armed vessels. Will- 
iam Peperell, of Maine, distinguished alike on 
the bench and in arms, commanded the expedi- 
tion, and, English vessels of war assisted in the 
assault. The French surrendered after a siege of 
forty-eight days, conducted with great vigor by 
the colonists. The gratification of the British 
government over the important victory is said to 
have been mingled with apprehension, due to the 
signal display of colonial power and energy. 
Upon peace being made in 1748, after four years' 
war, Ivouisburg, much to the indignation of the 
colonists, was given up to France in exchange 
for Madras, in India, and had to be reconquered 
in 1758. 



The point of land where the Allegheny and 
Monongahela meet in turbulent eddies and form 
the Beautiful River, early engaged the attention 
of the two nations, rivals for the dominion of 
the northern continent, while between two of the 
leading British colonies grave difference existed 
as to ownership of the coveted territory. Penn- 
sylvania, held in leading-strings by a Quaker 
policy which endeavored to reconcile the savage 
realities of an age of iron with theories of a 



ic6 The Land We Live In. 

golden millennium, failed to sustain her assertion 
of right with the energies that her population 
and resources might well have commanded, and 
Virginia, more ambitious and militant, boldly 
pushed an armed expedition into the very heart 
of the border w^ilderness, and began with the 
attack on Jumonville and his party the war that 
ended on the Plains of Abraham. 

In 1750 the Ohio Company, formed for the pur- 
pose of colonizing the country on the river of 
that name, surveyed its banks as far as the site of 
Louisville. The French, resolved to defend their 
title to the region west of the mountains, crossed 
Lake Erie, and established posts at Presque Isle, 
at Le Boeuf, and at Venango on the Allegheny 
River. Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, sent a 
messenger to warn the French not to advance. 
He selected for this task a young man named 
George Washington, a land surveyor, who, not- 
withstanding his youth, had made a good im- 
pression as a person of capacity and courage, 
well-fitted for the arduous and delicate undertak- 
ing. Washington well performed his task 
although the French, as might have been ex- 
pected, paid no heed to his warning. In the 
spring of 1754, a party of English began to build 
a fort where Pittsburg now stands. The French 
drove them off and erected Fort Duquesne. A 
regiment of Virginia troops was already march- 
ing toward the place. Upon the death of its 
leading officer, George Washington, the lieuten- 
ant-colonel, took command. Washington, over- 
whelmed by the superior numbers of the French, 
was compelled to surrender, and the French, for 
the time, were masters of the Ohio. 

This reverse did not diminish the esteem in 
which Washington was held b}'' the Virginians, 
and by those of the mother country who came in 
contact with him. When General Edward Brad- 
dock, in 1755, started on his ill-fated expedition 



Land We Live In. 107 

for the capture of Duquesne with a force of about 
two thousand men, including the British regulars 
and the colonial militia, Washington accom- 
panied the British general as one of his staff. 
Braddock was a gallant soldier, but imperious- 
and self-willed, and he looked almost with con- 
tempt upon the American troops. He made a 
forced march with twelve hundred men in order 
to surprise the French at Duquesne before they 
could receive reinforcements. Colonel Dunbar 
followed with the remainder of the army and the 
wagon-train. It was a delightful July morning 
when the British soldiers and colonists crossed a 
ford of the Monongahela, and advanced in solid 
platoons along the southern bank of the stream 
in the direction of the fort. Washington advised 
a disposition of the troops more in accordance 
with forest warfare, but Braddock haughtily re- 
jected the advice of the "provincial colonel," as 
he called Washington. The army moved on, 
recrossed the river to the north side, and con- 
tinued the march to Duquesne. The news of the 
British advance had been carried to the fort by 
Indian scouts. The French at first thought of 
abandoning the post, but they decided to attack 
the British with the aid of Indian allies. De 
Beaujeu led the French and Indians. The 
British were proceeding in fancied security when 
the forest rang with Indian yells, and a volley of 
bullets and flying arrows dealt death in their 
ranks. The regular troops were thrown into con- 
fusion, and Braddock tried courageously to rally 
them. Washington showed the admirable quali- 
ties which afterward made him victor in the 
Revolution. Cool and fearless amid the frantic 
shouts of the foe and the panic of the British 
soldier>% he gave Braddock invaluable assistance 
in endeavoring to retrieve the fortunes of the 
day. The provincials fought frontier fashion, 
nearly all losing their lives, but not without 



io8 The Land We Live In. 

picking off many of their enemies. Beaujeu, 
the French commander, was killed in the open- 
ing of the engagement. Of eighty- six English 
oflficers sixty-three were killed or wounded ; and 
about one-half the private soldiers fell, while a 
number were made prisoners. For two hours the 
battle raged, until Braddock, having had five 
horses shot under him, went down himself, 
mortally wounded. Then the regulars that re- 
mained took to flight, and Washington, left in 
command, ordered a retreat, carrying with him 
his dying general. Braddock died three days 
after the battle, expressing regret that he had not 
followed the counsel of Washington. The British 
prisoners were taken to Duquesne, and that 
evening the Indians lighted fires on the banks of 
the Allegheny River, near the fort, and tortured 
the captives to death. An English boy who was 
a prisoner at Duquesne, having been previously 
captured, and who afterward related his experi- 
ence in a narrative, a copy of which the writer 
has examined, says that the cries of the victims 
could be heard in the fort. The boy himself was 
subjected to closer confinement than usual, ap- 
parently for fear that the savages might demand 
that he be given up to them. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

^pulsion of the Acadians— A Cruel Deportation— The 
Marquis De Montcalm — The Fort William Henry Massa- 
cre — Defeat of Abercrombie — William Pitt Prosecutes the 
War Vigorously — Fort Duquesne Reduced — Louisburg 
Again Captured — Wolfe Attacks Quebec— Battle of the 
Plains of Abraham — Wolfe and Montcalm Mortally 
Wounded — Quebec Surrenders — New France a Dream of 
the Past— Pontiac's War. 

American history contains no sadder story 
than the expulsion of the Acadians, or French 
settlers of Nova Scotia. The act may have been 



The Land We Live In. 109 

justifiable on the ground of military necessity ; the 
Acadians were not loyal subjects, and they would 
have eagerly welcomed the expulsion of the 
British from North America, Indeed their con- 
duct might have been construed as treasonable, 
and the English had ground for regarding them 
as enemies of the British crown. Their disper- 
sion weakened the French cause at a time when 
that cause seemed in the ascendant, and when 
Braddock's unavenged defeat had reanimated the 
French with the hope of driving the English 
from America. Yet even if the deportation of 
the Acadians was required by the supreme law of 
self-preservation, and justifiable on the ground 
of their more than merely passive disloyalty, the 
manner of that deportation could not be justified. 
The separation of families, many of them never 
reunited, was a crime against humanity; the con- 
version of an honest, industrious and thrifty 
peasantry into a host of penniless vagrants, 
scattered like Ishmaelites through hostile colo- 
nies, was a wrong as cruel as it was unnecessary. 
Colonized in South Carolina or Georgia, the 
Acadians could hardly have been a menace to the 
power of Great Britain, while the Huguenot ele- 
ment in those regions, understanding the Acadian 
tongue, would have kept watch and ward against 
possible disloyalty. It is a pathetic feature of 
this most painful episode that the Huguenots, 
themselves driven out of France by the merciless 
tyranny of a Roman Catholic king, gave kindly 
relief to such Roman Catholic exiles from Acadia 
as were cast among them. They proved their 
true Christian spirit by returning good for evil. 
About six thousand of the Acadians were de- 
ported from their native land, and scattered the 
length and breadth of the English colonies. 
Many made their way to Louisiana, then a 
French possession, and their descendants still 
form a distinct class in that State. Some even 



no The Land We Live In. 

sought refuge among the Indians, and found the 
barbarian kinder than their civilized persecutors. 
X/ongfellow's poem, "Evangeline," is based on 
the touching story of Acadia. The French cause 
was greatly strengthened by the arrival in 1756 
of the Marquis de Montcalm, a distinguished 
soldier, to take command of the French forces in 
Canada. Montcalm displayed not only courage 
and skill, but humanity likewise, in the manage- 
ment of his campaigns, and history relieves him 
of responsibility for the horrid massacre by In- 
dians of the captured English garrison of Fort 
William Henry, after a safe escort to Fort 
Edward had been promised to the captives. The 
facts are that both British and French used the 
Indians as allies regardless of their savage prac- 
tices, but that the French, as at Fort Duquesne, 
showed less ability to restrain the savages after a 
victory. In the following summer — 1758 — Mont- 
calm inflicted a most disastrous defeat at Ticon- 
deroga on fifteen thousand British and colonial 
troops, led by General Abercrombie. The French 
force numbered only four thousand French and 
Indians. The English attempted to carry the 
works by assault, without the aid of artillery, 
and were mowed down by the fire of the French 
posted behind insuperable barriers. The English 
loss was about two thousand, while that of the 
French was inconsiderable. This was the last 
important success of the French in America. A 
master hand had seized the helm in Great 
Britain. 

William Pitt, the "Great Commoner," deter- 
mined upon a vigorous prosecution of the war in 
America. General John Forbes was sent, in 1758, 
with about nine thousand men to reduce Fort 
Duquesne. The illness which caused his death in 
the following year may be fairly accepted in 
excuse and explanation of the incompetent 
management of the expedition, and its almost 



The Land We Live In. iii 

fatal delays. Fortunately the French appeared to 
have lost the vigor and daring which they had 
displayed in the defeat of Braddock, and the 
sullen roar of an explosion, when the British 
troops were within a few miles of Duquesne, gave 
notice that it had been abandoned without a 
blow. General Forbes changed the name of the 
place to Fort Pitt, in honor of that illustrious 
minister to whose energetic direction of affairs 
was largely due the expulsion of the French arms 
from North America. When Westminster Abbey 
shall have crumbled over the tombs of Britain's 
heroes, and the House of Hanover shall have 
joined the misty dynasties of the past, Pittsburg 
will remain a monument, growing in grandeur 
with the progress of ages, to England's great 
statesman of the eighteenth century. 

Louisburg also fell in 1758, and in the follow- 
ing year the English prepared to end the struggle 
by an attack on Quebec. Pitt placed at the head 
of the expedition a young general, James Wolfe, 
who had distinguished himself at the capture of 
Louisburg. Wolfe had about eight thousand 
troops under a convoy of twenty-two line-of- 
battleships, and as many frigates and smaller 
armed vessels. Montcalm defended the city with 
about seven thousand Frenchmen and Indians. 
The heights on which the upper town of Quebec 
was situated, rising almost perpendicularly at 
one point of three hundred feet above the river, 
and extending back in a lofty plateau called the 
Plains of Abraham, seemed to defy successful 
attack. Wolfe spent the summer in fruitless 
efforts to reduce Quebec. At length he learned 
that the precipice fronting on the river and sup- 
posed to be impassable, could be scaled at a point 
a short distance above the town, where a narrow 
ravine gave access to the plateau. On the even- 
ing of September 12, the British vessels, loaded 
with troops, floated with the inflowing tide some 



112 The Land We Live In. 

distance up the river. Then past midnight, 
while the sky was black with clouds, the ships 
silently and undetected by the French floated 
down to the designated landing-place. The 
troops were taken on shore in flat-bottomed boats, 
with mufiled oars. At dawn Lieutenant-Colonel 
"William Howe led the advance up the ravine, 
drove back the guard at the summit, and pro- 
tected the ascent of the army. The garrison and 
people of Quebec awoke to see the redcoats in 
battle array on the Plains of Abraham. Mont- 
calm soon confronted the British. Both of the 
heroic commanders knew and felt all that was at 
stake on the fate of the day, and they both 
fought with a courage that gave a splendid ex- 
ample to their men. Wolfe, twice wounded, 
continued to give orders until mortally wounded 
he fell. Montcalm fell nearly at the same time, 
mortally wounded, and his troops, already waver- 
ing before the irresistible onset of the British, 
broke and fled. When told that death was near, 
"So much the better," said Montcalm, "I will 
not live to see the surrender of Quebec. " " Now, 
God be praised, I will die in peace," said the 
English commander, on hearing that victory was 
assured. Quebec was surrendered a few days 
later. Forts Niagara and Ticonderoga had al- 
ready fallen. 

Spain, having taken side with France, lost 
Cuba and the Philippine Islands to the English, 
but in the treaty of Paris of 1763, England gave 
those islands to Spain and received Florida in 
e::ichange. France ceded to Spain, in order to 
compensate that power for the loss of Florida, 
the city of New Orleans, and all the vast and in- 
definite territory known as Louisiana, stretching 
from the Gulf of Mexico to the unexplored 
regions of the northwest. New France was a 
dream of the past. 

The French policy in America had one essential 



The Land We Live In. 113 

and fatal feature. The French came more as a 
garrison than as colonists. They came to govern, 
rather than possess the laud, to rule, but not to 
supplant the natives of the soil. This policy in- 
sured some immediate strength, because the 
Indians were naturally less jealous of Europeans 
who did not threaten their hunting-grounds. 
On the other hand the ultimate failure of such a 
course was inevitable, in dealing as rivals and 
antagonists with a people who had come to 
possess the land, to drive out the Indian, to 
make the New World their home and a heritage 
for their descendants. The English settlers 
might be driven back for a time ; their cabins 
might be turned into ashes, and the tomahawk 
and scalping-knife leave dire evidence of savage 
vengeance and Gallic inhumanity. But the rally 
was as certain as the raid was sudden. A gar- 
rison might be massacred ; a colony could not be 
exterminated, and the defeats of Braddock and 
Abercrombie only burned into English breasts 
the resolution to tear down forever on the Ameri- 
can continent the flag which floated over the 
evidence of England's dishonor. 

The Algonquin Indians, who had regarded the 
French as allies and protectors, were now left to 
defend themselves against the English. Pontiac, 
chief of the Ottawas, conceived the idea of in- 
ducing all the tribes to unite in a general attack 
upon the English settlements as a last desperate 
resort to stay the advance of the whites. Pontiac 
is supposed to have led the Ottawas who assisted 
the French in defeating Braddock, and he per- 
haps underrated the power and prowess of his 
British antagonists. He was an able chieftain, 
of the same type as King Philip, Tecumseh and 
Sitting Bull. He saw that the white man and 
the red man could not possess the land together, 
and he determined to make a stand in behalf of 
his race. The struggle lasted for about two 
8 



114 The Land We Live In. 

years, attended by the usual barbarities of savage 
warfare, and ended in the death of Pontiac, who, 
after suing for peace, was murdered by a drunken 
Indian, bribed by an English trader with a barrel 
of rum to ccjmmit the deed. Instead of prevent- 
ing, Pontiac 's War only hastened the flight of 
the Indian and the march of the colonists toward 
the setting sun. 



THIRD PERIOD 
The Revolution. 



CHAPTER XV. 

Causes of the Revolution— The Act of Navigation— Acts of 
Trade — Odious Customs I,aws — English Jealousy of New 
England — Effect of Restrictions on Colonial Trade — Du 
Chatelet Foresees Rebellion and Independence— The Rev- 
olution a Struggle for More Than Political Freedom. 

It was not for the sake of the colonists that 
England had assisted them in driving the French 
from America, but with the wholly selfish aim of 
building up the trade and commerce of Great 
Britain. European nations looked upon their 
American colonies simply as resources from 
which the mother country might become en- 
riched, and in this respect the policy of England 
was not different from that of Spain, described 
in the beginning of this volume. As early as 
1625 an English author (Hagthorne) wrote that 
even in time of peace it was the purpose and aim 
of England to undermine and beat the Dutch and 
Spaniards out of their trades, "which may not 
improperly be called a war, for the deprivation 
and cutting off the trades of a kingdom may be 
to some prince more loss if his revenues depend 
thereon than the killing of his armies. " The 
wars against Holland, which resulted in the sub- 
jection to the British crown of the colonial 
possessions of that industrious people, and which 
compelled the fleets of the United Provinces to 
acknowledge British supremacy on the high seas, 
were in the line of commercial aggrandizement, 
and the Navigation Act transferred to England a 

(115) 



Ii6 The Land We Live In. 

large share of the Dutch carrying trade, and 
enriched English shipowners with an utterly 
selfish indifference to the welfare of English 
colonies. 

When the colonists, their western bounds no 
longer threatened by civilized foes, their planta- 
tions flourishing and their seaport towns wealthy 
with the j)rofits of a commerce carried on in con- 
tempt of imperial restrictions, began to feel and 
to assert that they were entitled to all the rights 
of freeborn Englishmen, and to the same com- 
mercial and industrial independence enjoyed by 
loyal subjects in England, they were surprised to 
learn that Parliament and the English people re- 
garded them not as freemen, but as tributaries. 
The colonists were themselves loyal, even up to 
the hour when they were compelled by stubborn 
tyranny to assert the right of revolution, for, to 
quote the language of John Adams, "it is true 
there always existed in the colonies a desire of 
independence of Parliament in the articles of 
internal taxation and internal policy, and a very 
general, if not universal opinion, that they were 
constitutionally entitled to it, and as general a 
determination to maintain and defend it. But 
there never existed a desire of independence of 
the Crown, or of general regulations of commerce 
for the equal and impartial benefit of all parts of 
the empire. " "If any man, ' * said the same great 
statesman, "wishes to investigate thoroughly the 
causes, feelings and principles of the Revolution, 
he must study this Act of Navigation, and the 
Acts of Trade, as a philosopher, a politician and 
a philanthropist. ' ' 

When the Act of Navigation was originally 
passed, in the Cromwell period, it is probable 
that the colonies were not seriously in the minds 
of the people and of Parliament. The act was 
aimed, as we have before stated, at the Dutch, 
and was effective for the purposes intended ; but 



The La?id We Live In. 117 

within the decade that elapsed before its re-enact- 
ment under the Restoration, the colonial trade 
had grown with a vigor that aroused jealousy and 
uneasiness at home, and the Act of Navigation 
was soon followed, in 1663, by the first of the 
Acts of Trade, which provided that no supplies 
should be imported into any colony, except what 
had been actually shipped in an English port, 
and carried directly thence to the importing 
colony. This cut the colonies off from direct 
trade with any foreign country, and made Eng- 
land the depot for all necessaries or luxuries 
which the colonies desired, and wnich they could 
not obtain in America. Nine years later, in 
1672, followed another act ' ' for the better secur- 
ing the plantation trade, ' ' which recited that the 
colonists had, contrary to the express letter of 
the aforesaid laws, brought into diverse parts of 
Europe great quantities of their growth, produc- 
tions and manufactures, sugar, tobacco, cotton, 
wool and dye woods being particularly enumer- 
ated in the list, and that the trade and navigation 
in those commodities from one plantation to 
another had been greatly increased, and provided 
that all colonial commodities should either be 
shipped to England or Wales before being im- 
ported into another colony, or that a customs 
duty should be paid on such commodities equi- 
ralent to the cost of conveying the same to Eng- 
land, and thence to the colony for which they 
were destined. For instance, if a merchant in 
Rhode Island desired to sell some product of the 
colony of Massachusetts in New York, and to 
forward the same by a vessel, either a bond had 
to be given that the commodity would be trans- 
ported to England, or a duty had to be paid, in 
money or in goods sufficiently onerous to protect 
the English merchant and shipowner against 
serious colonial competition in the carrying 
trade. 



ii8 The Land We Live In. 

The above act was followed up by another pro- 
viding penalties for attempted violation of the 
customs laws. In this statute no mention was 
made of the plantations and its general tenor in- 
dicated that it was intended to apply to Great 
Britain only, providing, as it did, for the searching 
of houses and dwellings for smuggled goods by 
virtue of a writ of assistance under the seal of 
His Majesty's court of exchequer. Under Will- 
iam the Third, who was as arbitrary a monarch 
toward the colonies as the second James had been, 
the statute was made directly applicable to the 
plantation trade, with the provision that "the 
like assistance shall be given to the said officers 
in the execution of their office, as by the last- 
mentioned act is provided for the officers in 
England. ' ' It was on the question of whether 
such a writ could be issued from a colonial court 
that James Otis made the famous speech in which 
he arraigned the commercial policy of England, 
stripped the veil of reform from the bust of the 
Stadtholder-King, and awakened the colonists to 
a throbbing sense of English oppression and of 
American wrongs — the oration which, in the lan- 
guage of John Adams, who heard it, "breathed 
into this nation the breath of life. " 



It is n'eedless to follow the numerous Acts of 
Trade in their order, for they were all in a line 
with the accepted and established principle of 
that age in England that the colonies should 
minister to the commercial aggrandizement of 
the mother country, instead of being the centres 
of an independent traffic, that they should be 
communities for the consumption of British 
manufactures and the feeding of British trade. 
New England was especially the object of English 
jealousy and restriction, and for reasons, as given 
by Sir Josiah Child, in his "New Discourse on 



The Land We Live Ln. 119 

Trade, ' ' written about the year 1677, that are 
creditable to the founders of those States, for 
after speaking of the people of Virginia and the 
Baruadoes as a loose vagrant sort, "vicious and 
destitute of means to live at home, gathered up 
about the streets of London or other places, and 
who, had there been no Knglish foreign planta- 
tion in the world, must have come to be hanged 
or starved or died untimely of those miserable 
diseases that proceed from want and vice, or have 
sold themselves as soldiers to be knocked on the 
head, or at best, by begging or stealing two 
shillings and sixpence, have made their way to 
Holland to become servants to the Dutch, who 
refuse none," he 'goes on to describe "a people 
whose frugality, industry and temperance and the 
happiness of whose laws and institutions, do 
promise to themselves long life, with a wonderful 
increase of people, riches and power." But, 
after paying this probably reluctant tribute to 
New England virtue and industry, he frankly 
avows his full sympathy with the restrictive sys- 
tem, and adds that "there is nothing more pre- 
judicial and in prospect more dangerous to any 
mother kingdom than the increase of shipping in 
her colonies, plantations and provinces." It is 
no wonder that John Adams said that he never 
read these authors without being set on fire, and 
that at last the same fire spread to every patriotic 
breast. 

The Acts of Navigation and of Trade were not 
the dead letters that some superficial writers and 
readers have seen fit to term them. It is true 
that obedience was reluctant and slow, and that 
evasion was extensive, and it is also true, that 
colonial commerce flourished in spite of the 
restrictions; but it should be remembered that 
the prolonged wars in which England was en- 
gaged gave lucrative opportunities for privateer- 
ing, and that even the customs duties, though 



I20 The Land We Live hi. 

intended to be virtually prohibitory, were not 
heavy enough to overcome the advantages which 
the colonists enjoyed. In Rhode Island the 
General Assembly asserted and maintained the 
right to regulate the fees of the customs officers, 
and, as far as was possible, the collection of the 
dues. The shipping of the colony rapidly in- 
creased, and in 1731 included two vessels from 
England, as many from Holland and the Mediter- 
ranean, and ten or twelve from the West Indies, 
and ten years later numbered one hundred and 
twenty vessels engaged in the West Indian, Afri- 
can, European and coasting trade. The period 
preceding the Revolution witnessed New Eng- 
land's greatest commercial prosperity, and it was 
in that age that Moses Brown and other enter- 
prising merchants and shipowners laid the 
foundation of fortunes, a liberal share of which 
has been expended with illustrious munificence 
in monuments of learning, of art and of charity. 
As for the restrictions upon domestic industry, 
they were not severely felt among a people de- 
voted, in the country to agriculture, and in the 
towns to local traffic and shipping, and the 
American farmer who wore homespun attire, did 
not realize the harshness or appreciate the pur- 
pose of the statute which prohibited the export of 
wool, or woolen manufactures. As for the 
Southern planter, the question of fostering 
domestic manufactures never entered his thoughts. 
He raised his tobacco and his cotton, exported 
them to England, and got what goods he needed 
there just as his descendants, in a later age, pro- 
cured the manufactured necessities and luxuries 
of life from the depots of New England trade.* 

But even if the British Parliament had never 
attempted to raise a revenue by taxation in the 



* " English Free Trade ; Its Foundation, Growth and 
Decline." By Henry Mann. 



The Land We Live In. 121 

American colonies, it is probable that in time 
the restrictions on commerce would have led to 
revolution, unless rescinded. This was the 
opinion of the shrewd observer Du Chatelet, who, 
after France had surrendered her American pos- 
sessions to Great Britain, said that "they (the 
chambers of commerce) regard everything in 
colonial commerce which does not turn exclu- 
sively to the benefit of the kingdom as contrary 
to the end for which colonies were established, 
and as a theft from the state. To practice on 
these maxims is impossible. The wants of trade 
are stronger than the laws of trade. The north 
of America can alone furnish supplies to its 
south. This is the only point of view under 
which the cession of Canada can be regarded as 
a loss for France ; but that cession will one day 
be amply compensated, if it shall cause in the 
English colonies the rebellion and the independ- 
ence which become every day more probable and 
more near. ' ' 



America, if not contented, was quiet under 
restrictive laws not stringently enforced, and but 
for the measures initiated by Grenville and 
Townshend, and approved by the king, the 
Parliament and the people of England, there 
would, if the leading American minds of that 
day were sincere, have been no insurrection in 
that era against British authority. George the 
Third is called a tyrant on every recurring Fourth 
of July, but the nation he ruled was as tyrannical 
as he, and impartial history cannot condemn the 
monarch without awarding a greater share of 
odium to his people, who sustained by their pro- 
nounced opinion and through their chosen rep- 
resentatives, every measure for the destruction of 
the liberties of these colonies, and who began to 
listen to the dictates of reason and of humanity 



122 The Land We Live In. 

only when America had become the prison of 
thousands of England's soldiers, and thousands 
of others, hired Hessian and kidnapped Briton 
alike, had been welcomed by American freemen 
to graves in American soil. The measures which 
led to war, and the war itself, were inspired and 
incited by the trading classes, as well as the aris- 
tocracy of England, who expected, in the de- 
struction of a powerful commercial and menacing 
industrial rival, an ample return for the blood 
and treasure expended in the strife. The Ameri- 
can people recognized that the struggle was for 
commercial and industrial as well as for political 
independence, and the stand in behalf of Ameri- 
can industry was taken long before the scattered 
colonies met an empire in the field of arms. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Writs of Assistance Issued — Excitement in Boston — The 
Stamp Act— Protests Against Taxation Without Repre- 
sentation—Massachusetts Appoints a Committee of Corre- 
spondence — Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry — Henry's 
Celebrated Resolutions— His Warning to King George — 
Growing Agitation in the Colonies — The Stamp Act Re- 
pealed—Parliament Levies Duties on Tea and Other 
Imports to America— Lord North's Choice of Infamy- 
Measures of Resistance in America — The Massachusetts 
Circular Letter— British Troops in Boston— The Boston 
Massacre— Burning of the "Gaspee "—North Carolina 
"Regulators" — The Boston Tea Party— The Boston Port 
Bill— The First Continental Congress— A Declaration of 
Rights — " Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death ! " 

Even before peace had been made with France 
the king's officers in America began to enforce 
the revenue laws with a rigor to which the colo- 
nists had been unaccustomed. Charles Paxton, 
commissioner of customs in Boston, applied tO' 
the Superior Court for authority to use writs of 
assistance in searching for smuggled goods.. 



The Land We Live In. 123 

These writs were warrants for the officers to 
search when and where they pleased and to call 
upon others to assist them, instead of procuring 
a special search-warrant for some designated 
place, Thomas Hutchinson, chief justice, and 
afterward royalist governor and refugee, favored 
the application, which was earnestly opposed by 
the merchants and the people generally.* "To 
my dying day, ' ' exclaimed James Otis, in plead- 
ing against the measure, "I will oppose with all 
the power and faculties God has given me, all 
such instruments of slavery on one hand and of 
villainy on the other. ' ' Parliament had author- 
ized the issue of the writs, however, and the 
custom house officers therefore had the law on 
their side. Writs were granted, but their en- 
forcement was attended with so many difficulties 
that the customs authorities virtually gave up this 
attempt to encroach upon the rights of the people. 
The next step in provoking the colonists to re- 
volution was the Stamp Act. The object of this 
enactment was to raise money for the support of 
British troops and the payment of salaries to 
■certain public officers in the colonies who had 
depended upon the colonial treasuries for their 
compensation. In this there was a threefold in- 
vasion of colonial rights. Taxation without rep- 
resentation was contrary to a principle recognized 
for centuries in England, vindicated in the 
revolution which cost Charles I. his head, and 
upheld in America from the very beginning of 
the settlements here. Again, while British troops 
had been welcome as allies in battling against 



* John Adams, in his letter to the President of Congress, 
July 17, 1780, attributes the outbreak of the Revolution to 
Hutchinson's course in this and other matters. " He was 
perhaps the only man in the world," wrote Adams, " who 
■could have brought on the controversy between Great 
Britain and America in the manner and at the time it was 
■done, and involved the two countries in an enmity which 
■must end in their everlasting separation." 



124 The Land We Live In. 

the French and the Indians, they were not de- 
sired as garrisons to overawe the free people of 
the colonies, and finally the colonial oflScers 
whom it was proposed to pay from the royal 
treasury would become the masters instead of 
servants of the people — or they would be servants 
only of the king. The purpose of the Stamp Act 
obviously was to make America th© vassal of Great 
Britain. The act required that legal documents 
and commercial instruments should be written, 
and that newspapers should be printed on stamped 
paper. 



The people everywhere protested against the 
tyrannical action of Parliament. Samuel Adams 
drew up the instructions to the newly elected 
representatives of Boston to use all efforts against 
the plan of parliamentary taxation. It was re- 
solved "that the imposition of duties and taxes 
by the Parliament of Great Britain upon a people 
not represented in the House of Commons is 
irreconcilable with their rights." A committee 
of correspondence was appointed in Massachusetts 
to communicate with other colonial assemblies, 
and the idea of union for the common defence 
began to take firm hold on the public mind. 
Benjamin Franklin, in the Congress held at 
Albany in 1754 to insure the aid of the Six 
Nations in the war then breaking out with 
France, had proposed a plan of union for the 
colonies, with a grand council having extensive 
powers and a president to be appointed by the 
crown. The plan was not adopted. Adams had 
written about the same time that ' ' the only way to 
keep us from setting up for ourselves is to dis- 
unite us." Everybody now began to perceive the 
need of union, which the great intellects of 
Franklin and Adams had discerned long before. 

No influence was so powerful in leading the 



The Land We Live In. 125 

South to stand side by side with the Northern 
colonies as that of Patrick Henry, the great orator 
of Virginia, In the House of Burgesses, in 1765, 
Mr. Henry introduced his celebrated resolutions 
against the Stamp Act, as follows : 

"Resolved, That the first adventurers and 
settlers of this his majesty's colony and dominion, 
brought with them, and transmitted to their 
posterity, and all other his majesty's subjects, 
since inhabiting in this, his majesty's said 
colony, all the privileges, franchises and im- 
munities, that have at any time been held, en- 
joyed and possessed by the people of Great 
Britain. 

"Resolved, That by two royal charters, granted 
by King James the First, the colonists, aforesaid, 
are declared entitled to all the privileges, liberties 
and immunities of denizens and natural born 
subjects, to all intents and purposes, as if they 
had been abiding and born within the realm of 
England. 

' ' Resolved, That the taxation of the people by 
themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves 
to represent them, who can only know what taxes 
the people are able to bear, and the easiest mode 
of raising them, and are equally affected by such 
taxes themselves, is the distinguishing character- 
istic of British freedom, and without which the 
ancient constitution cannot subsist. 

"Resolved, That his majesty's liege people of 
this most ancient colony have uninterruptedly 
enjoyed the right of being thus governed by their 
own assembly in the article of their taxes and 
internal police, and that the same hath never 
been forfeited, or any other way given up, but 
hath been constantly recognized by the king and 
people of Great Britain. 

' ' Resolved, therefore, That the General Assem- 
bly of this colony have the sole right and power 
to lay taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants 



126 The Land We Live In. 

of this colony ; and that every attempt to vest 
such power in any person or persons whatsoever, 
other than the General Assembly aforesaid, has a 
manifest tendency to destroy British as well as 
American freedom." 

On the back of the paper containing those 
resolutions, and found among Henry's papers 
after his death, was the following endorsement in 
the handwriting of Mr. Henry himself: "The 
within resolutions passed the House of Burgesses 
in May, 1765. They formed the first opposition 
to the Stamp Act, and the scheme of taxing 
America by the British Parliament. All the colo- 
nies, either through fear or want of opportunity 
to form an opposition, or from influence of some 
kind or other, had remained silent. I had been 
for the first time elected a burgess, a few da^-s 
before; was 5'oung, inexperienced, imacquainted 
with the forms of the House, and the members 
that composed it. Finding the men of weight 
averse to opposition, and the commencement of 
the tax at hand, and that no person w^as likely to 
step forth, I determined to venture, and alone, 
unadvised and unassisted, on a blank leaf of an 
old law book wrote the within. Upon offering 
them to the House, violent debates ensued. 
Many threats were uttered, and much abuse cast 
upon me by the party for submission. After a 
long and warm contest, the resolutions passed by 
a very small majority, perhaps of one or two 
only. The alarm spread throughout America 
with astonishing quickness, and the ministerial 
party were overwhelmed. The great point of 
resistance to British taxation was universally es- 
tablished in the colonies. This brought on the 
war, which finally separated the two countries, 
and gave independence to ours. Whether this 
will prove a blessing or a curse will depend upon 
the use our people make of the blessings which a 
gracious God hath bestowad on us. If they are 



The La7id We Live In. 127 

wise, they will be great and happy. If they are 
of a contrary character, they will be miserable — 
Righteousness alone can exalt them as a nation. 

"Reader, whoever thou art, remember this; 
and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself, and 
encourage it in others. — P. Henry." 

Every American realized the truth expressed in 
Mr. Henry's resolutions; but no man beside him- 
self dared to utter it. All wished for independ- 
ence ; and all hitherto trembled at the thought of 
asserting it. Randolph, Bland, Pendleton and 
Wythe,^with "all the old members whose influ- 
ence in the House had, till then, been unbroken, " 
opposed the resolutions, and had not Henry's 
unrivalled eloquence supported them, they would 
have been strangled in their birth. "The last and 
strongest resolution was carried by a single vote ;" 
and Peyton Randolph said, immediately after, 
"I would have given 500 guineas for a single 
vote!" From this we may easily imagine how 
spirited was the opposition, and how energetic 
the eloquence exerted against Henry, It was in 
the midst of this magnificent debate, while he 
was descanting on the tyranny of the obnoxious 
act, that he exclaimed in a voice of thunder, and 
with the look of a god, "Csesar had his Brutus — 
Charles the First his Cromwell — and George the 
Third — ('Treason,' cried the Speaker — 'treason, 
treason, ' echoed from every part of the House — 
it was one of those trying moments which is de- 
cisive of character — Henry faltered not for an 
instant ; but rising to a loftier attitude, and fixing 
on the Speaker an eye of the most determined 
fire, he finished his sentence with the firmest 
emphasis) may profit by their example. If this 
be treason, make the most of it. ' '* 

On the following day, when Henry was absent, 
the more timid asserted themselves and the most 



♦Wirts' " Ivife of Patrick Henry," pages 64. 65. 



128 The Land We Live In. 

important of the resolutions was reconsidered and 
expunged, 

A congress held at New York declared against 
the Stamp Act, and sent a protest to Parliament. 
Americans would not buy or use the stamps, and 
those who undertook agencies for their sale were 
treated as public enemies. Boxes of stamped 
paper were burned on arrival in port ; the .news- 
papers ignored the act, -and legal documents were, 
by general consent, treated as valid without the 
stamp. In the following year Parliament, after 
a prolonged debate, in which William Pitt 
earnestly supported the American cause, repealed 
the act. The news of the repeal was received 
with great rejoicing in America, and the colonists 
hoped that there would be no more attempts to 
invade their rights as English subjects. 



King George III. , however, was bent upon 
reducing the colonists to abject submission to his 
will, and the fact that William Pitt, whom the 
king detested, had championed the Americans, 
made the monarch all the more obstinate in his 
purpose to humiliate them. In 1767 Charles 
Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer, carried 
through Parliament a bill putting a duty upon 
tea, glass, paper and other articles entering Amer- 
ican ports. In connection with this measure the 
scheme of the British crown to reduce the colo- 
nies to a vassal condition was fully disclosed. 
Not only were troops to be supported out of the 
revenue thus raised, but the salaries of governors, 
judges and crown attorneys were to be paid from 
it, and any surplus remaining could be used by 
the king to pension Americans who had gained 
the royal grace by their subserviency. Town- 
shend suddenly died after these measures had 
been adopted, and was succeeded by Lord North, 
who soon afterward became prime minister. 



The Land We Live In. 129 

North was not personally in favor of dealing 
harshly with the colonies, but he yielded to the 
rojal will as the price of remaining in ofl&ce, and 
shares in history the infamy of his master's 
course. 

The Americans began to concert measures of 
resistance. They refused to use the dutiable ar- 
ticles, and made it unprofitable to import them. 
The Massachusetts legislature was dissolved by 
order of the king, because it had sent a circular- 
letter to other colonies inviting common action 
against the aggressions of Parliament. Other 
colonial assemblies were dissolved by the king's 
governors because they answered the letter favor- 
abl}'. The people's representatives continued to 
attend to the people's interests in informal con- 
ventions, and had the more time to give to the 
overshadowing issue of colonial rights, because 
royal displeasure had relieved them from the or- 
dinary business of law making. Boston and 
Richmond worked in harmony in the one great 
cause, and North and South forgot social and 
religious differences in common effort for the 
common weal. 



King George regarded Massachusetts as the 
hotbed and centre of colonial discontent, and in 
the autumn of 1768 he sent two regiments of 
British regulars to that city to assist in enforcing 
the Townshend acts. The troops and the citizens 
had frequent disputes, for the colonists were un- 
used to military arrogance, and refused to be 
ordered about by martinets in uniform. The 
Boston Massacre, so-called, in March, 1770, when 
seven soldiers fired into a crowd of townspeople, 
killing five and wounding several others, helped 
to inflame the antagonism between the provincials 
and the military, and Governor Hutchinson, at 
the demand of Samuel Adams, speaking in behalf 

Q 



I30 



The Land We Live In. 



of three thousand resolute citizens, removed the 
troops to an island in the harbor. In April, 1770, 
Parliament again yielded to the Americans in so 
far as to take off all theTownshend duties except 
the duty on tea, which the king insisted upon 
retaining as a vindication of England's right to 
impose the duty. 

The colonists continued as determined as ever 
not to submit to British taxation, or to the 
domineering course of the king's oihcers, which 
in some of the provinces had led to harsh and 
even bloody strife between the people and their 
oppressors. An armed schooner in the British 
revenue service called the Gaspee, gave oifence to 
American navigators on Narragansett Bay by re- 
quiring that their flag should be lowered in token 
of respect whenever they passed the king's vessel. 
The Gaspee ran aground while chasing a Prov- 
idence sloop. Word of the mishap was carried 
up to Providence and, on the same night (June 9, 
1772) sixty-four armed men went down in boats, 
attacked and captured the Gaspee, and burned the 
vessel. Abraham Whipple, afterward a com- 
modore in the Continental Navy, and one of 
the founders of the State of Ohio, led the expedi- 
tion. The royal authorities were greatly exaspe- 
rated on hearing of the daring achievement, and 
Joseph Wanton, Governor of Rhode Island, after- 
ward deposed from office for his loyalty to King 
George, issued a proclamation ordering diligent 
search for the perpetrators of the act. The British 
government offered a reward of |^50oo for the 
leader, but although the people of Providence 
well knew who had taken part in the exploit, 
neither Whipple nor his associates were betrayed. 
In North Carolina insurgents calling themselves 
"Regulators" fought a sanguinary battle wnth 
Governor Tryon's troops, and were defeated, and 
six of them hanged for treason. In South 
Carolina the people also divided on the issue 



The Land We Live In. 131 

between England and the colonists, but for the 
time stopped short of violence. 

The famous "Boston Tea Party" occurred in 
December, 1773. This was not a riotous, or, from 
the colonial standpoint, a lawless act, for the 
colonists were already administering their own 
affairs to a certain extent independently of royal 
authority, with the view to the preservation and 
defence of their liberties. The English East 
India Company had been anxious to regain the 
American trade and offered to pay an export duty 
more than equivalent to the import duty imposed 
in America, if the government would permit tea 
to be delivered at colonial ports free of duty. To 
this the British government would not consent, 
on the ground that it would be a surrender of the 
principle which the import duty represented. 
The government permitted the East India Com- 
pany, however, to export tea to America free 
from export duty, thus allowing the Americans 
to buy tea as cheaply as if no import duty had 
been levied. The British authorities assumed 
that Americans would be satisfied to sell the 
principle for which they were contending for 
threepence on a pound of tea. They learned the 
American character better when two ships laden 
with tea arrived in Boston. The citizens gathered 
in the old South Meeting-house, and in the 
evening about sixty men, disguised as Indians, 
boarded the ships and cast the tea into the harbor. 
Upon news of this event reaching England, King 
George and his ministers decided to make an ex- 
ample of Boston. A bill was introduced by Ivord 
North and passed almost unanimously closing the 
port of Boston and making Salem the seat of 
government. Another act annulled the charter 
of Massachusetts, and a military governor, Gen- 
eral Thomas Gage, was appointed, with absolute 
authority over the province. 



132 The Land We Live In. 

With the enactment of the Boston Port Bill, 
King George and his Parliament crossed the 
Rubicon. America was aflame. The other colo- 
nies joined in expressing their sympathy with 
Massachusetts, and their resolve to stand by her 
people and share their fate. A Continental Con- 
gress convened in Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia, 
on the fourth of September, 1774. The most 
eminent men in the colonies were now brought 
together for the first time to decide upon action 
which would affect the liberties of three millions 
of people. Patrick Henry was the first to speak, 
and he delivered an address worthy of his fame 
and worthy of the occasion. Colonel, afterward 
General Washington, then made the impression 
which earned for him the command of the 
American armies. The Congress drew up a Dec- 
laration of Rights, and sent it to the king. 
The people of Massachusetts formed a Provincial 
Congress with John Hancock for President, and 
began organizing provincial troops, and collect- 
ing military stores. Virginia continued to keep 
pace with Massachusetts. At a convention of 
delegates from the several counties and corpora- 
tions of Virginia, held in Richmond, March, 
1775, Patrick Henry stood resolutely forth for 
armed resistance. "Three millions of people," 
he said, ' ' armed in the holy cause of liberty, and 
in such a countr)' as that which we possess, are 
invincible by any force which our enemy can 
send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight 
our battles alone. There is a just God who pre- 
sides over the destinies of nations; and who will 
raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The 
battle, sir, is not to the strong alone ; it is to the 
vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we 
have no election. If we were base enough to 
desire it, it is now too late to retire from the 
contest. There is no retreat, but in submission 
and slavery ! Our chains are forged. Their 



The Land We Live Ln. 133 

clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston ! 
The war is inevitable — and let it come ! ! I repeat 
it, sir, let it come ! ! ! 

"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. 
Gentlemen may cry peace, peace — but there is no 
peace. The war is actually begun ! The next 
gale that sweeps from the north, will bring to our 
ears the clash of resounding arms ! Our brethren 
are already in the field! Why stand we here 
idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What 
would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so 
sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains 
and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!— I know 
not what course others may take ; but as for me, 
give me liberty, or give me death !" 



CHAPTER XVII. 

The Battle of Lexington— The War of the Revolution Begun 
—Fort Ticonderoga Taken— Second Continental Congress 
—George Washington Appointed Commander-in-chief- 
Battle of Bunker Hill— I^ast Appeal to King George— The 
King Hires Hessian Mercenaries— The Americans Invade 
Canada— General Montgomery Killed— General Howe 
Evacuates Boston— North Carolina Tories Routed at 
Moore's Creek Bridge — The Declaration of Independence 
—The British Move on New York— Battle at Brooklyn- 
Howe Occupies New York City— General Charles L,ee 
Fails to Support Washington— I,ee Captured— Washing- 
ton's Victory at Trenton— The Marquis De Lafayette 
Arrives. 

General Gage, military governor of Massachu- 
setts, received orders in April, 1775, to arrest 
John Hancock and Samuel Adams and send them 
to England to be tried for treason. The two 
patriots were at the house of a friend in Lexing- 
ton when Gage, on the evening of April 18, sent 
eight hundred British soldiers from Boston to 
seize military stores at Concord, and to arre.-,t 
Adams and Hancock at Lexington. Paul Revere^ 



134 '-^h^ Land We Live In. 

a patriotic engraver, rode far in advance of the 
troops to warn the people of their coming. When 
the soldiers reached Lexington at sunrise they 
were confronted by armed yeomanry drawn up in 
battle array. The British fired, killing seven 
men. The War of the Revolution was begun. 
From near and far the farmers hastened to attack 
the troops. Every wall concealed an enemy of 
the British ; from behind trees and fences a deadly 
fire was. poured into their ranks. Their track 
was blazed with dead and wounded, as they hur- 
ried back from Concord, disappointed in the ob- 
jects of their mission. Gage heard of the rising, 
and hurried reinforcements to the assistance of 
his decimated and almost fugitive soldiery, and 
with a loss of nearly three hundred men they 
re-entered Boston. From all parts of Massachu- 
setts, from Connecticut, New Hampshire and 
Rhode Island, the provincials hastened to face the 
invaders, and an army of sixteen thousand men 
of all sorts, conditions and colors, but most of 
them hardy New Englander farmers, besieged 
Governor Gage in Boston. Joseph Warren, John 
Stark, Israel Putnam and Benedict Arnold were 
among the leaders of the patriot forces. Ethan 
Allen, chief of the ' ' Green Mountain Boys, ' ' 
demanded and obtained the surrender of Fort 
Ticonderoga "by the authority of the Great Jeho- 
vah and the Continental Congress" (May lo) and 
Seth Warner captured Crown Point two days later. 
The second Continental Congress met at Phila- 
delphia the same day that Fort Ticonderoga was 
taken. The Congress chose for its president John 
Hancock, whom the British government wanted 
to try for treason, assumed direction of the troops 
encamped at Cambridge, and called upon Virginia 
and the middle colonies for recruits. George 
Washington was appointed to command the 
American forces. 



The Land We Live In. 135 

The battle of Bunker Hill proved to the British 
that the skill and courage which had been dis- 
played with signal success against the French 
could be used with equal effect against British 
troops. General Gage had determined to seize 
and fortify points in the neighborhood of Boston 
in order to strengthen his hold upon the city, 
and to enable him to resist a siege. This purpose 
of the British commander becoming known to 
the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, the Com- 
mittee ordered Colonel William Prescott, with one 
thousand men, including a company of artillery 
with two field-pieces, to occupy and fortify 
Bunker Hill. The force ascended Breed's Hill, 
much nearer Boston, on the evening of June 16. 
They worked all night under the direction of an 
engineer named Gridley, and in the morning the 
British on their vessels in the Charles River were 
surprised to see on a hill which had been bare 
the previous day a redoubt about eight rods 
square, flanked on the right by a breastwork 
which extended in a northerly direction to some 
marshy land, and which commanded both the 
city and the shipping. The guns of the fleet 
were quickly turned on the bold provincials, and 
the roar of cannon awoke the citizens of Boston 
to behold a conflict in which they had the 
deepest interest. The Americans continued to 
work under the shower of shot and shell, 
strengthening their fortifications for the desperate 
struggle they felt was at hand. General Artemas 
Ward, who commanded the colonial army, was 
not as prompt as he ought to have been in send- 
ing reinforcements to Breed's Hill, but at length 
Stark's New Hampshire regiment and Colonel 
Reed's regiment were permitted to join the men 
in the redoubt. The British sent 3000 of their 
best troops to carry the works by assault. Thou- 
sands of the people of Boston and neighborhood, 
many of whom had fathers, sons, brothers and 



136 The Land We Live In. 

husbands in the patriot lines, looked from hill 
and housetop and balcony as the regulars marched 
steadily to the attack. At the redoubt all was 
silent, although the British ships and a battery 
on Copp's Hill hurled shots at the Americans. 
Nearer and nearer marched the British. They 
were almost close enough for the final charge, 
when suddenly at the word "Fire!" — up sprang 
1500 Americans and poured a storm of bullets into 
the advancing enemy. Down went the British 
platoons as before the scythe of death. Whole 
companies were swept away. The survivors could 
not stand before the deadly hail, and back they 
fell to the shore. Some shots had been fired at 
the British from houses in Charlestown, and 
General Gage gave orders to fire that place. The 
British advanced again, the flames from the 
burning town adding to the terror of the scene. 
Again the hurricane of bullets drove them back 
to the shore. Strengthened by fresh troops the 
British marched up a third time to the hillside 
now scattered with their dying and their dead. 
British artillery planted as near as possible to the 
Americans swept the redoubt and the patriots, 
their ammunition failing at this critical time, 
were obliged to give way before the overwhelm- 
ing charge of the grenadiers. The Americans 
escaped in good order across Charlestown Neck, 
losing General Joseph Warren, who fell when 
leaving the redoubt. Colonel Prescott was in 
command throughout the engagement, although 
both General Warren and General Israel Putnam 
had taken a gallant part in the battle, but with- 
out any command. The fight lasted about two 
hours, and the British lost 1054 killed and 
wounded out of about 3000 troops engaged, and 
the provincials lost 450 killed and wounded. 
The British ministry looked on the result as 
virtually a defeat for their troops. 



The Land We Live In. 137 

Washinjrtou reached Cambridge on the second 
of July. He found the spirit of the troops ad- 
mirable, 1)ut their discipline wretched, and the 
leaders divided by dissension in regard to the 
commands. He labored assiduously and success- 
fully to bring order out of comparative chaos. 
The Congress made another effort to prevent a 
conflict with Great Britain by sending a respect- 
ful statement of America's case in a petition to 
the King. He refused to receive it, and issued a 
proclamation calling for troops to put down the 
rebellion in America. King George showed how 
little he regarded humanity in dealing with his 
revolted subjects by appealing to semi -barbarous 
Russia for troops to use against the colonists. 
The Empress Catharine refused to sell her people 
for such a purpose, and the British monarch then 
turned to the petty princes of Germany, where he 
bought 20,000 soldiers like so many cattle for the 
American war. As many of these were from 
Hesse Cassel, they were known as Hessians, It 
being now evident that a peaceable arrangement, 
short of al)ject surrender, could not be hoped for, 
the Continental Congress prepared to push the 
war with vigor, and if possible to secure a union 
of all British America against the enemy of 
American liberty. 



The invasion of Canada in the latter part of 
1775 by American expeditions under command of 
General Richard Montgomery and Colonel Bene- 
dict Arnold, was prompted by expectation that 
the French inhabitants of that region would gladly 
espouse the cause of the colonists, for whom they 
had shown sympathy when the people of Boston 
were in distress on account of the closing of their 
port. Only a few Canadians rallied to the Ameri- 
can standard ; the majority remained indifferent. 
Montgomery captured Montreal, but in the attack 



138 The Land We Live Ln. 

on Quebec he was slain, and Arnold wounded in 
the leg, and the Americans were defeated with a 
loss of about four hundred killed, wounded and 
prisoners. The death of Montgomery was a 
severe blow to the American cause. He was one 
of the ablest commanders in the service at a time 
when the colonists were much in need of prac- 
ticed military men, and even in England he 
was held in high regard. "Curse on his vir- 
tues," said Lord North; "they've undone his 
country. " 



In March, 1776, General William Howe evacu- 
ated Boston and sailed to Halifax, taking with 
him a number of refugees. Howe busied himself 
in Halifax in fitting out a powerful expedition 
for the capture of New York, where the people 
had taken up with enthusiasm the cause of the 
colonies. Late in April General Washington 
moved to New York and prepared to defend that 
city. Meantime Lord Dunmore, royal governor 
of Virginia, after endeavoring to excite an insur- 
rection of the slaves, had been conducting a pre- 
datory and incendiary warfare against the colony, 
until driven away by the militia, when he sailed 
off in a fleet loaded with plunder. In North 
Carolina, where an association of patriots had 
declared for independence at Mecklenburg as 
early as May, 1775, a severe battle occurred at 
Moore's Creek Bridge, February 26, 1776, be- 
tween the patriots, led by Colonel James Moore, 
and the loyalists or Tories, many of whom had 
fought for the Young Pretender in Scotland, but 
were now equally devoted to the House of Han- 
over. The Tories were completely routed, and 
the plans of the British to make North Caro- 
lina a centre of royalist operations were discon- 
certed. 



The Land We Live In. T39 

The Declaration of Independence was now in- 
evitable. Many of the colonists, including a 
large proportion of the well-to-do, were unwill- 
ing to throw off allegiance to the crown, and 
these were known as Tories and punished as 
traitors whenever they gave active expression to 
their sentiments. The majority of the people, 
however, were for complete separation from Eng- 
land, and were ready to support that determina- 
tion with their lives. Richard Henry Lee, of 
Virginia, made a motion in the Continental Con- 
gress, June 7, 1776, "that these united colonies 
are and of right ought to be free and independent 
States, that they are absolved from all allegiance 
to the British crown, and that all political con- 
nection between them and the State of Great 
Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved. ' ' 
John Adams, of Massachusetts, seconded the 
motion, and a committee was appointed to prepare 
a Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, 
of Virginia, was the author of the Declaration, 
which, after warm debate, v/as adopted by the 
unanimous vote of the thirteen colonies July 4, 
1776. On the same day the news arrived that 
the British commander, Sir Henry Clinton, had 
been repiilsed in an attempt to enter Charleston 
harbor. North and south the United States were 
free from the enemy, and although it was but 
the lull before the storm, the Americans had 
thus a precious opportunity to put down malcon- 
tents and to gather strength for the coming 
struggle. 



The British formed a plan to cut the Union in 
two by capturing New York, and establishing a 
chain of British posts from Manhattan to Canada. 
While General Carleton operated against the 
Americans from the Canadian frontier a large 
British fleet, commanded by Admiral Richard 



I40 The Land We Live Ln. 

Howe, arrived in the harbor of New York, carry- 
ing an army of 25,000 men, led by his brother, 
General William Howe. The Americans had but 
9000 men to defend Brooklyn Heights against the 
overwhelming force with which Howe attacked 
their position. The patriot troops, especially the 
Mary landers, fought gallantly, but were driven 
back by superior numbers. Great credit is due 
to Washington for his skill and success in saving 
the greater part of the army by timely withdrawal 
across the East River to New York. Howe oc- 
cupied the city of New York a few days later, 
Washington retreating slowly, and fighting the 
British at every favorable opportunity. 

It was at the time of Washington's retirement 
from New York that Nathan Hale, a young 
American captain, was put to death as a spy 
by the British. Hale volunteered to seek some 
information desired by the American commander- 
in-chief, and was betrayed, within the British 
lines, by a Tory who recognized him. He was 
treated most brutally by the British Provost- 
Marshal Cunningham, being denied the attend- 
ance of a clergyman and the use of a Bible. 
Letters which Hale wrote to his mother and other 
dear ones were torn up by the provost-marshal in 
the victim's presence. Hale was hanged Septem- 
ber 22, 1776. His last words were "I only regret 
that I have but one life to lose for my country. ' ' 
These words appear on the base of the statue 
erected to his memory in the City Hall Park, 
New York. 

General Howe concluded to move on Phila- 
delphia, and his object becoming known to 
Washington, the latter directed General Charles 
Lee, who was in command of about 7000 men 
at Northcastle, on the east side of the Hudson, 
to join him at Hackensack on the w^est side, 
so that the whole force of the Americans could 
be used to oppose Howe. Lee disregarded these 



The Land We Live In. 141 

orders, thereb)^ making it necessary for Wash- 
ington to retreat into Pennsylvania. Lee then 
led his own troops to Norristown, where he 
was captured by the British outside of his own 
lines while taking his ease at a tavern. lyee was 
an English adventurer of loud pretensions, prob- 
ably not lacking in courage, but wholly mer- 
cenary and unprincipled. That so worthless and 
dangerous a person should have been trusted with 
high command in the American army is ex- 
plained by the dearth of military leaders at the 
opening of the war. The capture of Lee was 
fortunate for the Americans, as he was succeeded 
by General John Sullivan, an excellent officer, 
who at once led his troops to the assistance of 
Washington. Thus reinforced the commander- 
in-chief was enabled to strike a blow at the 
British which revived the drooping spirits of the 
patriots. 



The battle of Trenton would not have been 
so memorable but for the dejected condition 
of the patriot cause at the time it was fought, 
and the evidence which it gave to England and 
the world at large of General Washington's pru- 
dent daring and military genius. At twilight on 
Christmas night, 1776, General Washington pre- 
pared to pass the Delaware with 2000 men to 
attack 1500 of the enemy, chiefly Hessians, who 
were stationed under the Hessian Colonel Rail at 
Trenton. It was a dark and bitter night, and the 
Delaware was covered with floating ice. Boats 
had been hastily procured, and with much diffi- 
culty against the swift current the troops were 
borne across. A storm of sleet and snow added 
to the hardship of crossing, and not until four 
o'clock in the morning did the little army stand 
on the opposite bank. The Americans advanced 
in two columns, one led by General Washington, 



142 The Land We Live Ift. 

the other by General Sullivan. The Germans 
had spent Christmas in carousing, and although 
it was full daylight when the Americans reached 
Trenton, they were not discovered until they 
were already on the Hessian pickets. Colonel 
Rail, aroused from slumber, quickly put his men 
in fighting order. The battle was quick and sharp. 
Colonel Rail fell mortally wounded ; and the 
main body of his troops, attempting to retreat, 
were captured. Some British light horse and 
infantry escaped, but all the Hessians, their 
standards, cannon and small-arms, fell into the 
hands of the Americans. The victory gave new 
vigor to the friends of independence, depressed 
the Tories, and astonished the British, who had 
looked upon the war as virtually over. General 
Howe was afraid to march upon Philadelphia, 
lest Washington should cut off his supplies, and 
for five months longer the invaders remained in 
the vicinity of New York, The patriots were 
further encouraged by the arrival in April, 1777, 
of the Marquis de Lafayette, of General Kalb, 
known as Baron de Kalb, and other foreign mili- 
tary officers of real merit and sincere devotion to 
the American cause. These offered their services 
to the Congress, and received commissions in the 
Continental army. 



TTie Land We Live In, 143 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Sir John Burgoyne's Campaign — His Bombastic Proclama- 
tion — The Tragic Story of Jane McCrea— Her Name a 
Rallying Cry— Washington Prevents Howe from Aiding 
Burgoyne — The Battle of Brandywiue— Burgoyne Routed! 
at Saratoga— He Surrenders with All His Army— Articles, 
of Confederation Submitted to the Several States— Effect 
of the Surrender of Burgoyne — Franklin the Washington 
of Diplomacy — Attitude of France — France Concludes to. 
Assist the United States— Treaties of Commerce and Alli- 
ance—King George Prepares for War with France— The 
Winter at Valley Forge— Conspiracy to Depose Washing- 
ton Defeated — General Howe Superseded by Sir Henry 
Clinton — The Battle of Monmouth — General Charles Lee's 
Treachery — Awful Massacre of Settlers in the Wyoming 
Valley— General Sullivan Defeats the Six Nations— Brill- 
iant Campaign of George Rogers Clark — Failure of the 
Attempt to Drive the British from Rhode Island. 

The disastrous campaign of General Sir John 
Burgoyne in the summer of 1777, against northern 
New York, was the turning point of the 
war. The object of the invasion was to seize 
the Hudson River, and divide the colonies by 
a continuous British line from Canada to the 
city of New York. Had the plan succeeded it 
would have been an almost fatal blow to the 
cause of independence. Its failure was not due 
to the courage or skill of any one Ameri- 
can commander, but to the indomitable resolu- 
tion with which every step of the invading army 
was resisted by Americans of every rank. The 
whole country rose as one man to oppose and 
harass the enemy, and it seemed as if every 
militiaman understood that the fate of his country 
depended on the repulse or destruction of the foe. 

Burgoyne's plan of campaign, as concerted with 
the British ministry, was to march to Albany with 
a large force by way of Lakes Champlain and 
George, while another force under Sir Henry 
Clinton advanced up the Hudson. At the same 
time Colonel Barry St. Leger was to make a 



144 ^^^i^ Land We Live Ln. 

diversion b\- way of Oswego, on the Mohawk 
River. Burgoyne began his advance in June, 
with about eight thousand men. Proceeding up 
Lake Champlain he compelled the Americans to 
evacuate Crown Point, Ticorrderoga and Fort 
Anne. His first blunder was in failing to avail 
himself of the water carriage of Lake George, at 
the head of which there was a direct road to Fort 
Edward. Instead of taking this course he spent 
three weeks in cutting a road through the woods, 
and building bridges over swamps. This gave 
time for General Schuyler to gather the yeomanry 
in arms, and for Washington to send troops from 
the southern department to reinforce vSchuyler. 
Burgoyne also lost valuable time in a disastrous 
attack on Bennington. 

Burgoyne issued a proclamation in most bom- 
bastic style. In the preamble he stated, besides 
his military and other distinctions, that he was 
"author of a celebrated tragic comedy called 
the 'Blockade of Boston.'" He accused the 
patriots of enormities "unprecedented in the 
inquisitions of the Romish Church, ' ' and offered 
to give encouragement, employment and assist- 
ance to all who would aid the side of the king. 
"I have but to give stretch," he concluded, "to 
the Indian forces under my direction — and they 
amount to thousands — to overtake the hardened 
enemies of Great Britain and America. I consider 
them the same wherever they lurk. If notwith- 
standing these endeavors and sincere inclination 
to assist them the frenzy of hostility should re- 
main, I trust I shall stand acquitted in the eyes of 
God and of men in denouncing and executing 
the vengeance of the State against the willful 
outcasts. The messengers of justice and of wrath 
await them in the^ field, and devastation, famine, 
and every concomitant horror that a reluctant Init 
indispensable prosecution of military duty must 
occasion will bar the way to their return. ' ' 



The Land We Live In. 145 

While Burgoyne's army was lying near Fort 
Ivdward occurred the tragic death of Jane 
McCrea, celebrated in song and story, Jane was 
the second daughter of the Reverend James 
McCrea, a Presbyterian clergyman of Scottish 
descent, and she made her home with her brother, 
John, at Fort Edward, New York. John McCrea 
was a patriot, but Jane had for her lover an oflScer 
in Burgoyne's army named David Jones, to whom 
she was betrothed. Between John McCrea and 
David Jones an estrangement had arisen on ac- 
count of their opposite political sympathies, but 
Jane clung to her affianced. "My dear Jenny," 
wrote Jones, under date of July 11, 1777, "these 
are sad times, but I think the war will end this 
year, as the rebels cannot hold out, and will see 
their error. By the blessing of Providence I 
trust we shall yet pass many years together in 
peace. * ^ ^ No more at present, but believe 
me yours affectionately till death. ' ' How faith- 
fully he kept that promise ! 

Jane McCrea well deserved her lover's devo- 
tion. She is described as a young woman of 
rare accomplishments, great personal attractions, 
and of a remarkable sweetness of disposition.* 
She was of medium stature, finely formed, 
of a delicate blonde complexion. Her hair was 
of a golden brown and silken lustre, and when 
unbound trailed upon the ground. Her father 
was devoted to literary pursuits, and she thus had 
acquired a taste for reading, unusual in one of 
her age — about twenty-four years — in those early 
times. 

When Burgoyne's army was about four miles 
from Fort Edward, David Jones sent a party of 
Indians, under Duluth, a half-breed, to escort his 
betrothed to the British camp, where they were 



*See " The Burgoyne Ballads," by William I^. Stone, from 
whose narrative this sketch is taken. 



146 The Land We Live Ln. 

to be married at once by Chaplain Brudenell, 
Lady Harriet Acland and Madame Riedesel, wife 
of General Riedesel, in command of the Bruns- 
wick contingent, having consented to be present 
at the wedding. It had been arranged that 
Duluth should halt in the woods about a quarter 
of a mile from the house of a Mrs. McNeil where 
Jane was waiting to join him at the appointed 
time. Meanwhile it happened that a fierce 
Wyandotte chief named Le Loup, with a band of 
marauding Indians from the British camp, drove 
in a scouting party of Americans, and stopping 
on their return from the pursuit at Mrs. McNeil's 
house, took her and Jane captive, with the inten- 
tion of taking them to the British camp. On 
their way back Le Loup and his followers en- 
countered Duluth and his party. The half-breed 
stated his errand, and demanded that Jane be 
given up to him. Le Loup insisted on escorting 
her. Angry words followed and Le Loup, in 
violent passion, shot Jane through the heart. 
Then the savage tore the scalp from his victim 
and carried it to the British camp. Mrs. McNeil 
had arrived at the camp a little m advance, hav- 
ing been separated from Jane before the tragedy. 
She at once recognized the beautiful tresses. 
David Jones never recovered from the shock. It 
is said that he was so crushed by the terrible 
blow, and disgusted with the apathy of Burgoyne 
in refusing to punish the miscreant who brought 
the scalp of Jane McCrea to the camp as a trophy, 
claiming the bounty offered for such prizes by the 
British, that he asked for a discharge and upon 
this being refused deserted, having first rescued 
the precious relic of his beloved from the 
savages. Jones retired to the Canadian wilder- 
ness, and spent the remainder of his life unmar^ 
ried, a silent and melancholy man. 

The murder of Jane McCrea fired New York. 
I'rom every farm, from every village, from every 



The Land We Live In. 147 

cabin in the woods the men of America thronged 
to avenge her death. Her name was a rallying 
cry along the banks of the Hudson and in the 
mountains of Vermont, and "her death con- 
tributed in no slight degree to Burgoyne's defeat, 
which became a precursor and principal cause of 
American independence."* 

The force of about two thousand men, whom 
Colonel Barry St. Leger led into the forests of what 
is now Oneida County, met stout resistance, and 
but for the Indian allies of the British, led by 
the great Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant, St. Leger's 
troops would probably have been destroyed or 
made captive. The fierce battle of Oriskany, in 
which the brave General Herkimer received a fatal 
wound, was a patriot victory, but it gave St. 
Leger a respite. When he heard that Benedict 
Arnold was approaching with troops sent by Gen- 
eral Schuyler, to give him battle, he retreated to 
Lake Ontario, shattering Burgoyne's hopes of aid 
from the Tories of the Mohawk Valley. Mean- 
while Congress had relieved General Schuyler 
from command in the North, and appointed 
Horatio Gates in his place. Gates was not a man 
of ability, but he was ably seconded in his 
operations against Burgoyne by Benedict Arnold. 

General Howe had intended to take Phila- 
delphia and then co-operate with Burgoyne in 
inflicting a final and crushing blow on the 
Americans, but the Fabian strategy of Washing- 
ton again proved too much for the British. 
Howe being prevented by Washington from 
crossing New Jersey with his army, undertook 
an expedition by sea. He sailed up Chesapeake 
Bay, marched northward with 18,000 men to 
Brandywine Creek, and there met Washington 
with 11,000, on the eleventh of September. The 
British held the field, but Washington retreated 

* stone, " The Burgoj'ne Ballads." 



148 The Land We Live In. 

slowl}^ disputing every foot of ground, and it was 
not until the twenty-sixth of September that Howe 
entered Philadelphia. Washington attacked the 
British encampment at Gerraantown at daybreak 
on the fourth of October, and attempted to drive 
the British into the Schuylkill River. One Ameri- 
can battalion fired into another by mistake, and 
this unhappy accident probably saved the British 
from another Trenton on a larger scale. Howe was 
unable to send any assistance to Burgoyne until 
it was too late to save that commander. 

Burgoyne found his progress stopped by the 
intrenchments of the Americans under General 
Gates, at Bemis Heights, nine miles south of 
Saratoga, and he endeavored to extricate himself 
from his perilous position by fighting. Two 
battles were fought on nearly the same ground, 
on September 19, and October 7. The first was 
indecisive; the second resulted in so complete a 
rout for the British that, leaving his sick and 
wounded to the compassion of Gates, Burgoyne 
retreated to Saratoga. There finding his provi- 
sions giving out, and that there was no chance 
for escape, he capitulated with his entire army, 
October 17, 1777. 



The Congress had, by common consent, repre- 
sented national sovereignty from the beginning of 
the war, but it was not until November 15, 1777, 
that articles of confederation were approved by 
the Congress, and submitted to the States. This 
compact, entitled "Articles of Confederation and 
Perpetual Union, ' ' was but little more than a 
treaty of mutual friendship on the part of the 
several States, and was not sanctioned by all of 
them until near the close of the Revolution. It 
was too weak to be effective in time of peace, 
and hardly necessary in time of war, when the 
common danger gave sufficient assurance of 



The Land We Live In. 149 

fidelity to the common cause. However, the 
Articles of Confederation undoubtedly promoted 
confidence in the stability of the government 
where that confidence was most needed, in the 
Kuropean cabinets adverse to British dominion 
in America. 

The surrender of Burgoyne gave to the Ameri- 
can .cause a status which it had lacked abroad, 
and it brought into full and effectual exercise 
the diplomatic side of the struggle for independ- 
ence. It was then that Franklin showed himself 
another Washington. "On the great question of 
the foreign relations of the United States, ' ' says 
Wharton, ' ' it made no matter whether he was 
alone or surrounded by unfriendly colleagues ; it 
was only through him that negotiations could be 
carried on with France, for to him alone could 
the French government commit itself with the 
consciousness that the enormous confidences re- 
posed in him would be honorably guarded. ' ' 
France, chiefly through the influence of Frank- 
lin, had given covert assistance to the colonies 
from the beginning of the struggle, but the 
French ministry hesitated to take a decisive 
step. Fear that the Americans would succumb, 
and leave France to bear the weight of British 
hostility, and apprehension that England might 
grant the demands of the colonists and then 
turn her forces against European foes, de- 
terred the French government from avowed sup- 
port of the American cause. The news from 
Saratoga gave assurance that America would 
prove a steadfast as well as a powerful ally, and 
that with the aid of the United States the British 
empire might be dismembered, and France 
avenged for her losses and humiliations on the 
American continent. Nor was revenge the only 
motive which led France to cast her lot with the 
revolted colonies. England was already stretch- 
ing forth to establish her power in India, and 



150 The Land We Live In. 

France felt that with North America and India, 
both subject to the British, the maritime and 
commercial superiority of England would be a 
menace to other powers. 

France did not act without long and careful 
premeditation on the part of the French crown and 
its ministers, for the relations between England 
and her American colonies had been carefully and 
acutely considered by the statesmen of Versailles 
long before the point of open revolt was reached. 
Even when France concluded to throw her 
resources into the scale on the side of the United 
States she did not altogether abandon her cau- 
tious attitude. The French government acknowl- 
edged the United States as a sovereign and 
treaty-making power; but while the treaty of 
commerce of February 6, 1778, was absolute and 
immediate in its effects, the treaty of alliance of 
the same date was contingent on war taking place 
between Great Britain and France. It is interest- 
ing to note that Benjamin Franklin was the sub- 
ject of invective by Arthur Lee and others because 
at the suggestion of Silas Deane, of Connecticut, 
he procured a clause in the commercial treaty 
providing for the exportation of molasses to the 
United States, free of duty, from the French 
colonies — the molasses being used to manufacture 
New England rum. Owing to the objection of Lee 
this clause was afterward abrogated, and the 
infant industry of making New England rum had 
to survive without special protection. 

Upon receiving formal notice of the treaties 
Lord North immediately recalled the British 
ambassador from Paris, and George III. stated, 
in bad English, to Lord North (the king spelled 
"Pennsylvania" "Pensilvania, " and "wharfs" 
"warfs") that a corps must be drawn from the 
army in America sufficient to attack the French 
islands. There was a state of partial war without 
a declaration of war. The naval forces of 



The Land We Live In. 151 

England and France came into unauthorized 
collision, and actual war was the result. 



Pending the negotiations with France Wash- 
ington and his heroic army spent a winter of 
painful hardship at Valley Forge, about twenty 
miles from Philadelphia. Half-naked and half- 
fed, they shivered in the rude huts which they 
erected, while their commander, if better housed, 
showed by actions more than words that he felt 
every pang of his soldiers. Washington's anxiety 
at this critical period was greatly aggravated by 
the conspiracy known as "Conway's Cabal," to 
depose him from the command, and put in his 
place the pretentious but incapable Gates. This 
conspiracy was narrowly defeated by the patriotic 
firmness of the supporters of Washington in Con- 
gress, one of whom — William Duer, of New York, 
an Englishman by birth — had himself carried in 
a litter to the floor of Congress, at the risk of his 
life, to give his vote for Washington. Never on 
the battlefield did he who is justly called the 
Father of Our Country show such heroism, such 
fortitude, such devotion to duty as in face of this 
combination of deluded men to effect his ruin. 



The French alliance was hailed with delight in 
the United States. George III., who personally 
controlled military operations, stated his con- 
clusion about a month after the French treaties, 
and on the day they were formally announced, to 
act on the defensive, holding New York and 
Rhode Island, but abandoning Pennsylvania. 
General William Howe was superseded in com- 
mand of the British troops by Sir Henr>' Clinton, 
who evacuated Philadelphia, departing from that 
city before dawn of June 18, and starting for New 
York with about 17,000 effective men. Upon 



152 The Land We Live Ln. 

being informed of this movement, Washington 
hastened after the British. He followed Clinton 
in a parallel line, ready to strike him at the first 
favorable opportunity. 

When the British were encamped near the court- 
house in Freehold, Monmouth Count}', New Jersey, 
June 27, Washington made arrangements for an 
attack on the following morning, should Clinton 
move. General Charles Lee, who had recentl}^ 
been a prisoner in the hands of the British, was in 
command of the advance corps. He showed such 
incapacity and folly in his directions to subor- 
dinate and far more competent generals as nearly 
to wreck the army. His confused and perplexing 
instructions promoted disorder, chilled the ardor 
of the troops, and gave the enemy opportunities 
they never could have gained without this assist- 
ance from Lee. As an apparently conclusive 
blow to the side he pretended to serve Lee 
ordered a retreat, and the British, from being on 
the defensive, were speedily in pursuit. Wash- 
ington's anger, on perceiving the condition of 
affairs, was terrible. He rebuked Lee with 
scathing severity, quickly rallied his troops, and 
checked the pursuing enemy. The Americans, 
once more in arra}', confronted their foes. A 
real battle then followed, with both sides doing 
their best. Americans and British fought w'ith 
stubborn courage, the latter at length making a 
bayonet charge on which depended the fate of 
the day. They were repulsed with terrible 
slaughter. The British then retreated a short 
distance, and both armies rested, the Americans 
expecting that the conflict would be renewed 
with dawn. Clinton drew his men off silently 
under cover of darkness, and was far on his 
way to New York when the Americans, in the 
morning, saw his deserted camp. The British 
lost four officers and 245 non-commissioned 
officers and privates, besides taking man}^ of the 



The Land IVc Live Ln. 153 

wounded with them. They also lost about 1000 
men by desertion while passing through New 
Jersey. The American loss in the battle of Mon- 
mouth was 228 killed, wounded and missing. 
Many of the missing, who had fled when Lee 
ordered a retreat, returned to their commands. 
Lee was superseded and afterward dismissed from 
the army. It did not come to light until about 
seventy-five years later, from a document among 
Sir William Howe's papers, that while a prisoner 
with the British Lee had suggested to Sir William 
Howe a plan for subjugating the Americans. 
This fact throws a flood of light on Lee's conduct 
at Monmouth. 



A few days after the battle of Monmouth oc- 
curred the awful massacre of Wyoming. Tories 
and Indians, led by Colonel John Butler, de- 
scended into the happy valley-, inhabited by 
settlers from Butler's native Connecticut, and 
spread fire, bloodshed and desolation. Hundreds 
of men, women and children perished, many of 
ihem by torture, and the survivors made their 
way back through the wilderness to Connecticut. 
Among the victims of this massacre was Anderson 
Dana, a direct ancestor of Charles Anderson 
Dana, the well-known editor. Everywhere 
throughout the borders Tories and Indians carried 
fire and death, the British sparing no effort to 
stir up the tribes to hostilit3\ The patriots 
suffered terribly, but the ferocity of the savages 
and of their hardly less savage associates made 
Americans all the more resolute in resisting and 
overcoming the foes of American independence. 
General Sullivan invaded the country- of the Six 
Nations, and inflicted upon them a crushing 
defeat. In the southwest, the frontiersmen, not 
content with resisting the enemy, followed them 
into their wilds, and laid the foundations of new 



154 "^he Land We Live In. 

States. In the northwest, Colonel Hamilton, the 
British commander at Detroit, who was more 
responsible, perhaps, than any other British 
officer for inciting the Indians to deeds of bar- 
barity, was defeated and captured by George 
Rogers Clark, and the whole country north of the 
Ohio River, from the Alleghanies to the Missis- 
sippi, became subject to the United States. 

The British still held New York and Newport, 
and Washington planned to capture the former 
place with the assistance of a fleet which had 
arrived from France. Some of the vessels drew 
too much water, however, to cross the bar, and 
the scheme was abandoned. The French fleet 
proceeded to Newport, and compelled the British 
to burn or sink six frigates in that harbor. An 
American force of about 10,000 men had been 
gathered under command of General Sullivan to 
drive the British out of Rhode Island, and it was 
expected that the troops, numbering 4000, on 
board the French fleet, would assist in the under- 
taking. The French admiral, D'Estaing, failed 
to support Sullivan, and the latter, with a force 
reduced by the wholesale desertion of the militia 
to 6000 men, fought a gallant but losing action 
with the British, and withdrew to the mainland. 



The [.and We Live In. 155 



CHAPTER XIX. 

The British Move Upon the South — Spain Accedes to the 
Alliance Against England — Secret Convention Between 
France and Spain — Capture of Stony Point — John Paul 
Jones — The Bon Homme Richard and the Serapis — A 
Thrilling Naval Combat — Wretched Condition of American 
Finances — Franklin's Heavy Burden — The Treason of 
Benedict Arnold— Capture of Andr^— Escape of Arnold— 
Andr^ Executed as a Sp3^ — Sir Henry Clinton Captures 
Charleston, General lyincoln and His Army — l^ord Corn- 
wallis L,eft in Command in the South— The British Defeat 
Gates Near Camden, South Carolina — General Nathaniel 
Greene Conducts a Stubborn Campaign Against Corn- 
wallis— The Latter Retreats Into Virginia— Siege of York- 
town— Cornwallis Surrenders—" Oh, God ; it is All Over !" 

Toward the close of 1778, the British undertook 
to conquer the Southern States, beginning with 
Georgia, where an expedition by sea would be 
within reach of aid from the British troops 
occupying Florida. The American forces in 
Georgia were weak in numbers, and although 
bravely led by General Robert Howe, they were 
unable to resist the British. Savannah fell, and 
Georgia passed under the rule of the invaders, the 
royal governor being reinstated. To counterbal- 
ance this discouragement news arrived from Eu- 
rope early in 1779 that Spain had acceded to the 
Franco-American combination against England. 
Spain, unlike France, sent no troops to America 
to assist the patriots, although the hostile attitude 
of the Spaniards toward Great Britain, and the cap- 
ture of the British post of St. Joseph by a Spanish 
expedition from St. Louis, in 1781, aided in 
strengthening the American cause in the West, 
and making the British less aggressive in that 
direction. 

Recent disclosures have shown that the secret 
convention between France and Spain, at this 
time, was in no sense hostile to American 
interests, as at first asserted and afterward inti- 
mated by the historian Bancroft. On the contrary, 



156 The Latid We Live In. 

Spain bound herself not to lay down arms 
until the independence of the United States 
should be recognized by Great Britain, while the 
condition that Spanish territory held by England 
should be restored to Spain did not militate 
against the territorial claims of the United States. 
It was clearly better for the United States, look- 
ing forward to future expansion, that adjoining 
territory should be held by Spain in preference 
to Kngland. The history of the past hundred 
years proves this. Canada remains British, while 
every foot of former Spanish territory in North 
America is now part of the United States. 

* -x- * * * * * 
The summer of 1779 witnessed General Anthony 

Wayne's memorable exploit, the capture of Stony 
Point. The fort, situated at the King's Ferry, 
on the Hudson, stood upon a rocky promontory, 
connected with the mainland by a causeway 
across a narrow marsh. This causeway w^as 
covered by the tide at high water. Lieutenant- 
Colonel Johnson conmianded the garrison, con- 
sisting of a regiment of foot, some grenadiers 
and artillery. General Wayne led his troops, the 
Massachusetts light infantry, through defiles in 
the mountains, and moved on the fort about 
midnight. The Americans went to the attack in 
two columns, with unloaded muskets and fixed 
bayonets. They were unseen until within pistol- 
shot of the pickets. Undeterred by the hasty 
discharge of musketry and cannon the Americans 
pressed on with the bayonet, the two columns 
meeting in the centre of the fort. The garrison 
surrendered, and the Americans, after removing 
the ordnance and stores to West Point, and de- 
stroying the works, abandoned the place. 

* -X- * -jt * * * 
What American schoolboy's heart does not 

thrill at the name of John Paul Jones, that 



The Land We Live In. 157 

redoubtable sailor, who carried the American flag 
into English seas, and made Britons feel in some 
degree the injuries their king was inflicting on 
America ! John Paul Jones was a Scotchman by- 
birth; an American by adoption. His original 
name was John Paul, and he added the name of 
Jones after taking up his abode in Virginia. As 
early as 1775, when Congress determined to 
organize a navy, Jones was commissioned as first 
lieutenant, and in command of the sloop Prov- 
idence he made several important captures of 
British merchant vessels. As commander of the 
Ranger, in 1777, Jones captured the British man- 
of-war Drake, made successful incursions on the 
British coast, and seized many valuable prizes. 

In August, 1779, Jones started on a cruise in 
command of an old Indiaman, which he called, 
in compliment to Franklin, the Bon Homme 
Richard. Associated with the Bon Homme 
Richard were the Alliance and the Pallas, and 
one smaller vessel officered by Frenchmen, but 
under the American flag. On September 23, 
Jones encountered, off Flamborough Head, a 
fleet of forty British merchantmen, under convoy 
of the Serapis, Captain Pearson, of forty-four 
guns, and the Countess of Scarborough, a ship of 
twenty guns. Regardless of the enemy's strength 
the American commander gave the signal for 
battle. Unfortunately Captain L/andais of the 
Alliance was subject to fits of insanity and had 
been put in command of that ship against the 
wishes of Jones. Landais failed to obey orders 
and was worse than useless during the fight. Jones 
was however gallantly supported by the Pallas, 
which engaged and captured the Countess of 
Scarborough, leaving Jones a free field with his 
principal antagonist, the Serapis. No fiercer 
naval conflict has been recorded in history. The 
fight lasted from seven o'clock in the evening 
until eleven o'clock, most of the time in darkness. 



158 The Land We Live In. 

The Bon Homme Richard got so close to the 
Serapis in the beginning of the battle that 
their spars and rigging became entangled to- 
gether, and Jones attempted to board the British 
vessel. A stubborn hand-to-hand struggle ensued, 
Jones and his men being repulsed. Then the 
Bon Homme Richard dropped loose from her 
antagonist, and with their guns almost muzzle to 
muzzle, the two vessels poured broadsides into 
each other. The American guns did destructive 
work, the Serapis catching fire in several places. 
About half past nine the moon rose on the 
fearful conflict. The Bon Homme Richard caught 
fire at this time, while the water poured in 
through rents made by British cannon. The two 
vessels had again come closer, but not so as to 
prevent the guns from being handled. While the 
cannon roared and the flames shot up, the two 
crews again met in desperate hand-to-hand strife, 
for it was evident that one of the two vessels 
must be lost. By the light of the flames Jones 
saw that the mainmast of the Serapis was cut 
almost in two. Quickly he gave the order, and 
another double-headed shot finished the work. 
Captain Pearson, who had commanded his ship 
most gallantly, hauled down his flag and sur- 
rendered. Alluding to the fact that the British 
government had proclaimed Jones a pirate, Pear- 
son said : " It is painful to deliver up my sword 
to a man who has fought with a rope around his 
neck. ' ' Jones took possession of the Serapis, 
and the Bon Homme Richard sank beneath the 
waves the second day after the engagement. The 
Congress voted to Jones a gold medal and the 
thanks of the nation. Franklin's report of Octo- 
ber 17, 1779, to the Commissioners of the Navy, 
giving news of the victory, shows that the Ameri- 
can cruisers were causing great devastation to 
British commerce. 



The Land We Live Ln. 159 

The exploits of Anthony Wayne and Paul Jones 
served to lighten the gloom caused by the defeat 
of General Lincoln in his attempt to recapture 
Savannah, and by the depressed condition of 
American finances, which made it difficult to 
carry on the war. It was the earnest desire of 
Congress to push the struggle vigorously, and 
large sums of money were necessary for that 
purpose. The Continental currency issued under 
authority of Congress had so decreased in pur- 
chasing power as to be almost worthless; the 
army suffered great distress for lack of clothing 
and food, and the supply of munitions of war 
fell far short of military needs. Benjamin 
Franklin labored unceasingly to meet the in- 
cessant drafts upon him as agent of the United 
States in France, and but for the unbounded con- 
fidence which Louis XVI. and his great minister, 
Vergennes, had in Franklin's assurances, the 
United States might have been so paralyzed finan- 
cially as to fall a prey to Great Britain. It was 
in the midst of this gloom and uncertainty that 
General Benedict Arnold, the hero of Quebec and 
Saratoga, sought to sell his country to the British. 

An able general and as brave a soldier as wore 
the American uniform, Arnold was bitterly dis- 
appointed because he failed to receive from 
Congress all the recognition which he thought 
he deserved. He might not, however, have be- 
come a traitor but for his pecuniary difficulties, 
while undoubtedly the Tory sympathies of his 
wife, whom he married in Philadelphia in 1778, 
had a marked influence upon him. In July^ 
1780, Arnold, at his own request, was appointed 
by Washington to command West Point, the great 
American fortress commanding the Hudson River. 
The capture of West Point by the British would 
have accomplished for their cause what Burgoyne 
had failed to achieve — the cutting off of the 
Northern from the Middle and Southern States. 



i6o The Land We Live In. 

and the establishment of the British in an almost 
impregnable position on the Hudson. Arnold 
entered into negotiations with Sir Henry Clinton, 
the British commander at New York, for the sur- 
render of West Point. For this service Arnold 
was to be made a brigadier-general in the British 
army and to receive $50,000 in gold. Major John 
Andre, adjutant-general of the British army, con- 
ducted the correspondence on behalf of Clinton. 
Andre went up the Hudson in the British sloop 
of war Vulture, and had a secret meeting with 
Arnold near Haverstraw. It was arranged be- 
tween them that Clinton should sail up the Hvid- 
son with a strong force and attack West Point, 
and Arnold, after a show of resistance, would 
surrender the post. When Andre was ready to go 
back to New York the Vulture had been com- 
pelled to drop down stream, and Andre had to 
cross the river and proceed on horseback. He 
was about entering Tarry town, when a man armed 
with a gun, sprang suddenly from the thicket, 
and seizing the reins of his bridle exclaimed : 
"Where are you bound?" At the same instant 
two more ran up, and Andre was a prisoner. He 
offered them gold, his horse and permanent pro- 
vision from the English government if they 
would let him escape, but the young men — John 
Paulding, David Williams and Isaac Van Wart — 
rejected all his offers, and insisted on taking 
him to the nearest American post.* Andre had 



* Charges were made by Andre himself, and echoed in 
Congress at a much later period by Colonel Benjamin Tall- 
madge, who had the custody of Andre, to the effect that 
the captors of the ill-fated British officer were corrupt, and 
only held him because they could profit more than by 
letting him go. On this point the testimony of Alexander 
Hamilton, who passed much time with Andre previous to 
his execution, and had full opportunity to weigh his state- 
ments, ought to be sufficient. In a letter to Colonel Sears 
General Hamilton thus compared the captors of Andre with 
Arnold : "• This man " (Arnold), " is in every sense despica- 
ble. * * * To his conduct that ofthe captors of Andre forms a 



The Latid We Live In. i6i 

a pass from Arnold in which the former was 
called "John Anderson. ' ' Colonel Jameson, com- 
mander of the post to which Andre was brought, 
did not suspect any treason on the part of Arnold, 
and allowed Andre to send a letter to that general. 

Meantime Washington, who had gone to Hart- 
ford to consult with the French general Rocham- 
beau about making an attack on New York, 
returned sooner than expected. Hamilton and 
Lafayette, of Washington's staff, went forward to 
breakfast with Arnold, while W^ashington was 
inspecting a battery. At the breakfast table 
Andre's letter was handed to Arnold. The traitor 
perceived at once that discovery was inevitable, 
and excusing himself to his guests as calmly as 
if going out on an ordinary errand, he went to 
his wife's room, embraced her, and bade her 
farewell. Mounting a horse of one of his aides, 
Arnold rode swiftly to the river bank. There he 
entered his barge and was rowed to the Vulture. 

Andre was tried by court-martial on the charge 
of being a spy, convicted and executed October 
2, 1780. The captors of Andre were rewarded 
with a silver medal and $200 a year for life. 
Arnold received the reward for which he had 
offered to betray his country. Washington, who 
was far from being vindictive, made repeated 
attempts to get possession of Arnold in order to 
punish him for his treason. 



While the war was languishing in the North it 
was being carried on with vigor in the South. Sir 

striking contrast ; he tempted their integrity with the offer 
of his watch, his horse, and any sum of money they should 
name. They rejected his offer's with indignation; and the 
gold ihat could seduce a man high in the esteem and confi- 
dence of his country, who had the remembrance of his past 
exploits, the motives of present reputatior and future glory 
to prop his integrity, had no charms for three simple 
peasants, leaning only on their virtue, and a sense of duty.'* 

II 



1 62 The Land We Live Ln. 

Henry Clinton, in the spring of 1780, captured 
the city of Charleston, with General Lincoln and 
all his army, Clinton then returned to New 
York, leaving Lord Cornwallis in command of 
the British. Another American army, mostly 
militiamen and new recruits, many of whom had 
never handled a bayonet, was formed in North 
Carolina, and placed unfortunately under the 
command of the incompetent Gates. The British 
met Gates at Sander's Creek, near Camden, and 
after a sharp conflict the Americans were com- 
pletely routed. British and Tories were now 
more barbarous than ever in their treatment of 
patriots who fell into their hands, and repeated 
executions of Americans on pretended charges of 
violating compulsory oaths of allegiance, or no 
charges at all, excited thirst for retribution 
among the friends of liberty. General Nathaniel 
Greene, of Quaker birth, but one of the greatest- 
soldiers of the Revolution, was sent to command 
a new army of the South; with Daniel Morgan, 
William Washington and Henry Lee — known as 
^'Light-horse Harry" and father of the Con- 
federate commander, Robert E. Lee — as his 
lieutenants. Morgan, at Cowpens, annihilated 
Tarleton's Legion, which had committed many 
cruelties in South Carolina. Greene fought the 
British at Guilford, Hobkirk's Hill and Eutaw 
Springs, and although he did not win a battle, 
he left the enemy, on each occasion, in much 
worse condition than before the encounter. Corn- 
wallis, the British commander, although not de- 
feated, was .becoming weaker and weaker, and he 
retreated into Virginia from an enemy whose 
every repulse was a British disaster. 



The final act in the mighty drama was now 
approaching. From the Potomac to the confines 
of Florida the vSouthland was aroused against the 



The Land We Live In. 165 

British as it never could have been aroused ex- 
cept for the barbarities which Cornwallis perpe- 
trated and sanctioned. The British commander 
wis behind the intrenchments at Yorktown with 
an army of about eight thousand men and a 
horde of Tories who had been willing agents in 
cirrying out against their own countrymen the 
atr^ci )us decrees which for a time made a 
Pjlaid of the Carolinas. Sir Henry Clinton, 
thDrjughly deceived by the movements of Wash- 
in g^tai and Richambeau, was anxious only to 
Dr:)tect Naw York, and the victorious fleet of 
Fra ice was prepared to cut off the escape of 
Cor;iwxllis by the sea. Washington and Rocham- 
baau, with the allied armies, marched against 
Yjrktown from their rendezvous at Williamsburg 
on September 28. They drove in the British out- 
posts, and began siege operations so promptly 
and vigorously that the place was completely in- 
vested on the thirtieth by a semi-circular line 
of the allied forces, each wing resting on the 
York River. The Americans held the right ; the 
French the left. A small body of British at 
Gloucester, opposite Yorktown, was beset by a 
force consisting of French dragoons and marines, 
and Virginia militia. Heavy ordnance was 
brought from the French ships, and on the after- 
noon of October 9, the artillery opened on the 
British. Red-hot balls were hurled upon the 
British vessels in the river, and the flames 
shooting up from a 44-gun ship showed that fire 
was doing its work. Under cover of night 
parallels were thrown up closer and closer to the 
British lines, and the besieged saw the chain 
wiiich they could not break tightening Ground 
them. The Americans and French carried by 
storm two redoubts which commanded the 
trenches, and now Cornwallis had to take his 
choice between flight or surrender, if flight were 
possible. He determined to flee, but a terrible 



i64 The Land We Live Ln. 

storm made the passing of the river too danger- 
ous, and a few troops who had crossed over were 
brought back to Yorktown. 

French and Americans poured shot and shell 
into the British intrenchments, and the bombard- 
ment grew heavier day by day. The superior 
forces and strong situation of the besiegers made 
it impossible to break through their lines. It 
would not even have been a forlorn hope. No 
course now remained but to surrender. Corn- 
wall is sought to make the best terms possible. 
He has been severely and plausibly criticised 
for abandoning the Tory refugees to American 
justice and vengeance. Horace Walpole, writing 
in safe and comfortable quarters, far from siege 
or battlefield, said that Cornwallis "ought to 
have declared that he would die rather than 
sacrifice the poor Americans who had followed 
him from loyalty, against their countrymen. ' ' 
Had Cornwallis so declared he would doubtless 
have had a chance to die without any objection 
on the part of the patriots on whose friends and 
relatives he had inflicted devilish cruelties. 
Cornwallis was obliged to choose between perish- 
ing with all his army, or accepting the terms 
which his conquerors saw fit to grant. Apart 
from the formal articles of surrender he obtained 
the informal consent of the allies that certain 
Tories most obnoxious to their countrymen 
should be permitted to depart to New York in 
the vessel which carried dispatches from the 
British commander to Sir Henry Clinton.* 



* Walpole is right, however, in pointing out that the un- 
conditional surrender of the refugees by Cornwallis had an 
important influence in bringing the war to a close by de- 
priving the British of American support and sympathy. 
"It was a virtual end of the war," he says. "Could one 
American, unless those shut up in New York and Charles- 
ton, even out of prudence and self-preservation, declare for 
England, by whose general they were so unfeelingly aban- 
doned?" 



The Land We Live In. 165 

General Lincoln, who had been compelled to 
surrender to the royal troops at Charleston in the 
previous year, received the sword of Corn wall is 
from General G'Hara, and twenty-eight British 
captains, each bearing a flag in a case, handed 
over their colors to twenty-eight American 
sergeants. The number of troops surrendered 
was about 7000, and to these were added 2000 
sailors, 1500 Tories and 1800 negroes. The 
British lost during the siege in killed, wounded 
and missing about 550 men ; the Americans lost 
al)out 300. The spoils included nearly 8000 
muskets, 75 brass and 160 iron cannon and a 
large quantity of munitions of war and militarj^ 
stores, as well as "about one hundred vessels, 
above fifty of them square-rigged."* On the 
day after the surrender Washington ordered every 
American soldier under arrest or in confinement 
to be set at liberty, and as the next day would be 
Sunday he directed that divine service should be 
performed in the several brigades. 



"Oh God, it is all over!" exclaimed Lord 
North, on hearing that Cornwallis had surren- 
dered. And it was all over, although we have 
Franklin's authority that George III. continued 
to hope for a revival of his sovereignty over 
America "on the same terms as are now making 
with Ireland." These hopes were soon dis- 
sipated, and a treat}- of peace was finally signed 
at Paris, September 23, 1783. The British troops 
sailed away from New York on November 25, and 
General Washington, after a tender parting with 
his officers, resigned his commission. A great 
number of Tory refugees departed from New York 
with the British, but it is doubtful whether their 
lot was happier than that of those who remained 



♦Livingston to Dana, October 22, 1781. 



i66 The Land We Live L71. 

to accept tbe new order of things. It is only 
necessary to glance at the diary of Hutchinson, 
the royalist governor of Massachusetts, to perceive 
that, even under the most favorable circumstances, 
the situation of the exiled Tories was miserable 
indeed. Many of them settled in Canada, there 
to hand down to their descendants feelings of 
antipathy which, in America, have long been 
discarded. Many of them wisely returned to the 
United States, and were magnanimously forgiven 
and received as brethren and citizens. No voice 
was raised to plead more eloquently in their be- 
half than that of Patrick Henry. "I feel no 
objection, " he exclaimed, "to the return of those 
deluded people. They have, to be sure, mistaken 
their own interests most wofully, and most wo- 
fully nave they suffered the punishment due to 
their offences. * ^ * Afraid of them ! — what, 
sir — shall we who have laid the proud British 
lion at our feet, now be afraid of his whelps?" 



FOURTH PERIOD 
Union. 



CHAPTER XX. 

Condition of the United States at the Close of the Revolu- 
tion — New England Injured and New York Benefited 
Commercially by the Struggle — Luxury of City Life — 
Americans an Agricultural People — The Farmer's Home 
—Difficulty in Traveling— Contrast Between North and 
South — Southern Aristocracy — Northern Great Families — 
White Servitude— The Western Frontier— Rarly Settlers 
West of the Mountains— A Hardy Population— Disappear- 
ance of the Colonial French— The Ordinance of 1787— 
Flood of Emigration Beyond the Ohio. 

Peace with Great Britain left the United States 
free and independent, but burdened with the ex- 
pienses of the war, and agitated by the problems 
which independence presented. The soldiers of 
the Continental Army went back to their firesides 
and their fields, and trade began to show signs 
of revival. New England's commercial interests 
had received a serious blow ^rom the Revolution, 
while New York city, occupied by the British 
throughout the war, the headquarters of the royal 
forces with their lavish expenditures, and its 
commerce protected and convoyed by the British 
fleet, was benefited instead of injured by the 
struggle. The merchants of New York, whether 
attached or not at heart to the royalist cause, put 
business before patriotism, while the flag of St. 
George floated over their city, and urged the 
British to severer measures against the "rebels'* 
in order that New York's mercantile interests 

(167) 



i68 The Land We Live In. 

might be promoted and safeguarded." Apart 
from natural advantages, next in importance to the 
Erie Canal as a cause of New York's leading com- 
mercial position is the fact that the British were 
in possession of the city during the Revolution. 

There was considerable luxury in city life then 
as now. *'By Revolutionary times love of dress 
everywhere prevailed throughout the State of 
New York," says Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, "a 
love of dress which caused great extravagance 
and was noted by all travelers, "f "^f there is a 
town on the American continent," said the 
Chevalier de Crevecoeur, "where English luxury 
displayed its follies it is in "New York." Phila- 
delphia was not far behind New York in extrav- 
agance, notwithstanding Quaker traditions, while 
Boston, rich in solid wealth, was more conserva- 
tive in displaying it, and retained in appearance 
at least something of Puritan simplicity. 

The urban residents of those days were, how- 
ever, insignificant in numbers as compared with 
the 'total population. The Americans were an 
agricultural people, and they were a self-depend- 
ent people. The articles of clothing needed m 
the farmer's home were manufactured in the 
home; the tailor went around from house to 
house making into suits the cloth which the 
family had woven ; the school teacher "boarded 
around' ' as an equivalent for salary that might 
otherwise have been paid in worthless currency, 
and the simple requirements of rural existence 



* A number of years ago the Hon. Williani M. Evarts 
delivered a speech before the New York Chamber of Com- 
merce in which he congratulated that body on its patriotism 
" during- the Revolution." Having been allowed to examine 
the records of the Chamber for the revolutionary period I 
wrote an article which appeared over my initials in the 
New York Stin pointing out that the Chamber, as shown by 
its own records, had been ultra-loyal, instead of patno.ic— 
H. M. 

t Costumes of Colonial Times. 



The Land We Live In. 169 

were supplied in a large degree by trade and 
barter without the use of what passed as money. 
The farmer's cottage stood upon a level sward of 
green. The kitchen was the living-room, and 
there the family spent their time when not out 
at work or retired to rest. It was the largest 
apartment in the house, and its great fire-place, 
with a ruddy back-log and pine knots flaming 
and sparkling on the iron-dogs, offered a most 
cheerful welcome on a New England winter's 
night. The baking oven, heated with fine-split 
dry wood, cooked the frugal but savory meal, 
which was served up on a solid old-fashioned 
table, around which the household gathered, first 
giving thanks to the Giver of all. When not 
busied with other duties, the housewife pressed 
with measured round the treadles of the loom, as 
she twilled the web she was weaving ; and as the 
shades of evening descended the sonorous hum 
of the spinning-wheel gave token to the young 
man on courtship intent that the daughter of the 
house was at home. From the kitchen a door 
opened into the best room, a cheerless sort of 
place only thrown open on special occasions, and 
not to compare in comfort with the kitchen, its 
high-backed settle and its genial fire, whose 
glowing ashes seemed to reflect the warmer glow 
of loving eyes. Other doors from the kitchen 
opened into sleeping-rooms, although in the 
larger houses the family usually slept upstairs. 
The w^ell was used for cooling purposes as well as 
water supply, and the old oaken bucket suspended 
from the well-sweep by means of a slender pole, 
invited the passing stranger to quaff nature's 
wholesome beverage. Wheeled vehicles were not 
often seen in the rural districts, horses being 
commonly used for locomotion. The difficulty of 
traveling discouraged intercourse between differ- 
ent communities, and a journey from Boston to 
New York, taking a week by stage-coach, and three 



I70 The Land We Live In. 

or four days by sailing vessel, was a more mo- 
mentous undertaking than a voyage to Europe 
now. Few traveled tor pleasure. Few took any 
active interest in public affairs beyond their own 
neighborhood, or at most their own State, and 
the bond of the confederation rested loosely on 
communities now no longer united by the ap- 
prehension of common danger. 



Between the North and the South the contrast 
was already ominous of future strife. The 
Southern planter lived like an aristocrat sur- 
rounded by servants and slaves, dispensing 
hospitality according to his means after the 
fashion of the British nobility. Cotton had not 
yet poured the gold of England into the lap of 
the South, but tobacco held its own as a sub- 
stantial basis of wealth. In the North, on the 
other hand, the tiller of the soil was usually its 
owner, assisted sometimes by indentured servants 
or slaves, but never himself above the toil which 
he exacted from others. The North, too, had its 
great families, descendants of patroons and others 
who had received large grants of land and enjoyed 
exceptional privileges, and were now growing in 
wealth with the increasing value of their prop- 
erty ; but the aristocratic Northern families were 
gradually losing political power and influence, 
and sinking toward the level of the people ; 
whereas in the South the aristocratic element 
was arrogating more and more the control of State 
affairs, and the representation of Southern States 
in the councils of the nation. In the North also 
equality was promoted by the potent influence of 
the Revolution in breaking up the system of 
servile white labor. Master and man were sum- 
moned for the defence of their country ; they 
fought, they suffered and endured together the same 
privations for a common cause. Distinctions 



The Land We Live In. 171 

of class were obliterated by the blood that 
flowed freely for the freedom of all, and what 
remained of ancient aristocratic prejudice was 
yet more thoroughly undermined by the example 
of the great social upheaval in France. Never- 
theless the system of white servitude was not 
entirely abolished until long after the close of 
the eighteenth century, immigrants to this 
country frequently selling themselves as *'re- 
demptioners' ' to pay the cost of their passage. 
The limits of this form of service seldom 
exceeded seven years. No taint was apparently 
attached to it, and many a worthy family had a 
' ' redemptioner' ' for its first American ancestor. 



Looking to the western frontier just after the 
Revolution, and in particular the forks of the 
Ohio, we see a population very different in char- 
acter from that of the older settlements. The 
peace-loving Quaker clung to the eastern coun- 
ties, where life and property were secured from 
raid and reprisal, and formed his ideas of the 
Indian character and deserts from the red men, 
who, either Christianize! or demoralized, pre- 
ferred the grudging charity of civilization to the 
rude and frugal spoils of the chase, or the blood- 
stained rapine of war. This specimen of Indian 
was usually so harmless, in some instances per- 
haps so deserving, that the well-meaning Quaker 
learned to receive with discredit the stories of 
horror from the frontier, and discouraged with 
his voice and influence every step toward the 
subjection of the hostile Indian and his Euro- 
pean allies. Emigrants were forbidden, under 
stern penalties, to encroach on the Indian domain, 
and petitions from invaded settlements for arms 
and assistance, were met with cold indiffer- 
ence or positive refusal. The men and women 
who, in face of such discouragement, cast their lot 



172 The Land We Live In. 

beyoud the mountains, must have been a hardy 
set indeed, and made of stuff not likely to 
yield in a wrestle with wild nature and wilder 
humanity. 

The early inhabitants of that frontier region 
were of sturdy Scotch and Irish stock. The 
troublous political times in their native countries 
doubtless had much to do with their emigration 
hither. The star of the Stuart line had set never 
to rise again, and its bright and hopeless flicker, 
in the days of '45, was extinguished in the blood 
of Scotland's noblest sons. But while order 
reigned, content was far from prevailing, and 
many a brave heart sought, on the distant shore 
of America, to forget the anguish of the past in 
the building of a prosperous future. With a 
final sigh for "Ivochaber No More," the High- 
lander turned his gaze from the lochs and glens 
of his fathers, and crossed the ocean to that new 
land of promise where every man might be a 
laird, and a farm might be had for the asking, 
where no Culloden would remind him of the 
fate of his kindred, and his children could grow 
up far from the barbarous laws that crushed out 
the spirit of the ancient clans. Along the banks 
of the Monongahela those Scotch and Irish 
settlers built their rude cabins under the guns of 
Fort Pitt, guarded — strange irony of fate — from 
a savage enemy by the very flag which flaunted 
oppression in their native Britain and Ireland. 
That they learned to love their adopted land who 
can question? A Virginian cavalier, accustomed 
to the graces and politesse of a slave-owning 
aristocracy, saw fit to sneer at their humble 
abodes, and their lack of the finer accessories of 
civilization, forgetting that a cabin is more often 
than a palace the cradle of the purest patriotism, 
and that as true American hearts beat in those 
huts in the wilderness as in the courtly precincts 
of Richmond. 



The Land We Live In. 173 

But the "poor mechanics and laborers" ex- 
ercised a tremendous influence on the destinies 
of the young, and as yet disunited republic. 
They were freemen. Pittsburg, the outpost of 
civilization, had no slave within sight of its re- 
doubts, and the spirit of freedom which hovered 
there, found rest and refreshment for its broader 
flight toward the great northwest. The decision 
of 1780, which saved Pittsburg to Pennsylvania, 
preserved it as a stronghold of freedom and of 
free labor, and now it far surpasses in industry, 
wealth and population the then slave-labor capital 
of the Old Dominion. 

It is an interesting fact that the colonial French 
left no impress on the site where they made such 
a gallant stand for New France. They have 
vanished as completely as the Indian. In Detroit, 
in St. Ivouis, French ancestry can be traced in 
families of high position and honorable lineage. 
Such families are to those cities what the 
Knickerbockers are to New York. They give a 
gracious flavor to society; they are a link between 
the dim and heroic past and the dashing, eager, 
practical present ; they add a dreamy fascination 
to the social landscape, like the lingering haze 
of morning illumined by the rays of the sun fast 
mounting to zenith. Where Duquesne stood, 
neither track nor mark remains of the volatile, 
daring and glory-loving race whose lily flag 
greeted the bearers of brave Beaujeu's remains 
from the fatal field of Braddock. No authentic 
trace has been discovered even of the fortifi- 
cations which they erected, and Fort Duquesne 
is known only by its tragic place in American 
history. 

The ordinance of 1787, creating the North- 
western Territory, and throwing it open for settle- 
ment, at once induced a large emigration to the 
lands beyond the Ohio, Descendants of the Puri- 
tans mingled in the pioneer throng with rangers 



174 The Land We Live In. 

from Virginia and backwoodsmen from Pennsyl- 
vania. The frontiersman in hunting-shirt and 
jnoccasins blazed a path for the New Englander 
in broadcloth coat, velvet collar, bell-crowned 
liat and heavy boots. These emigrants all 
possessed valuable qualities for the building up 
■of new States, and they all displayed in the 
trials which immediately beset them the courage 
which had carried the nation successfully through 
the war for independence. They were entering 
upon a vast and fertile domain which the abo- 
riginal possessors, notwithstanding treaties, did 
not propose to abandon, and which was the scene 
of sanguinary conflict before it was finally 
surrendered. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

The Spirit of Disunion — Shays' Rebellion — A National Gov- 
ernment Necessary — Adoption of the Constitution — Tariff 
and Internal Revenue — The Whiskey Insurrection — Presi- 
dent Washington Calls Out the Military— Insurgents Sur- 
render — "The Dreadful Night" — Hamilton's Inquisition. 

The spirit of disunion was brewing; the people 
were tax-ridden, the States without credit and 
the prevailing discontent found expression in 
riot and rebellion. The insurrection of Daniel 
Shays and his followers in Massachusetts, the 
disturbances in western North Carolina and other 
outbreaks in various parts of the country were 
but symptoms of radical weakness in the body 
politic, and of the complete failure of the loose- 
jointed confederation to command the confidence 
of the people and maintain the credit of the 
nation. It became evident that union was as 
vitally important in peace as in war; that 
national burdens could only be sustained by a 
national government, and that the welfare of 
trade and commerce required one system of inter- 
state laws enforced by the united power of all the 



The Land We Live In. 175 

States, The adoption of the Federal Constitution 
created a nation; it created a free government 
worth all that it had cost; it realized the dream 
of Franklin and the prediction of Adams; it 
made possible the American Republic of to- 
day, and the great work was fittingly crowned 
with the election of George Washington as first 
President. 



The first business of the new government was 
to establish the public credit. Alexander Hamil- 
ton, Washington's Secretary of the Treasury, 
proposed with this object a tariff on imports, and 
a tax on whiskey. To the former the people 
submitted readily enough ; the latter provoked 
an insurrection which for some time threatened 
to be formidable. The farmers of the western 
counties of Pennsylvania — Westmoreland, Fayette, 
Washington and Allegheny — having no market 
for grain, in the decade following the Revolu- 
tion, on account of the absence of large settle- 
ments in their vicinity, and the lack of facilities 
to transport to more distant places, were from 
necessity compelled to reduce the bulk of their 
grain by converting it into whiskey. A horse 
could carry two kegs of eight gallons each, worth 
about fifty cents per gallon on the western, and 
one dollar on the eastern side of the mountains, 
and return with a little iron and salt, the former 
worth fifteen to twenty cents per pound, the 
latter five dollars per bushel, at Pittsburg. The 
still was therefore the necessary appendage of 
every farm, where the farmer was able to procure 
it; if he was not he carried his grain to the more 
wealthy to be distilled. To the large majority of 
these farmers excise laws were peculiarly odious. 
The State of Pennsylvania made some attempt, 
during and just after the Revolution, to enforce 
an excise law ; but without effect. A man named 



176 The Land We Live In. 

Graham, who had kept a public house in Phila- 
delphia, accepted the appointment of Collector 
for the western counties. He was assailed, his 
head shaven and he was threatened with death. 
Other collectors were equally unsuccessful. 

The United States excise law was enacted in 
March, 1791. While the bill was before Congress, 
the subject was taken up by the Pennsylvania 
Legislature, then in session, and resolutions were 
passed in strong terms against the law, and re- 
questing the senators and representatives, by a 
vote of thirty-six to eleven, to oppose its passage ; 
the minority voting on the principle that it was 
improper to interfere with the action of the 
Federal Government, and not from approval of the 
measure. The law imposed a tax of from nine to 
twenty-five cents per gallon, according to strength, 
upon spirits distilled from grain. To secure the 
collection of the duties, suitable regulations were 
made. Inspection districts were established, one 
or more in each State, with an inspector for each. 
Distillers were to furnish at the nearest inspection 
oflBce full descriptions of their buildings, which 
were always subject to examination by a person 
appointed for that purpose, who was to gauge and 
brand the casks ; duties to be paid before removal. 
But to save trouble to small distillers, not in any 
town or village, they were allowed to pay an 
annual tax of sixty cents per gallon on the 
capacity of the still. 

Such a measure could not fail to be intensely 
unpopular, especially among the small farmers to 
whom the whiskey derived from their grain was 
the principal source of income and support. To 
the large distillers the tax was not altogether 
odious, as they comprehended that the new law 
would add greatly to their trade by cutting off 
their lesser rivals, and securing the manufacture of 
spirits to the well-to-do and well-established few. 
On the same ground distillers to-day are very 



The Land We Live In. 177 

generally opposed to the removal of the internal 
revenue tax on spirits. But popular clamor car- 
ried all before it, and it would have been unsafe 
for any one to openly avow himself in favor of 
the excise. At a meeting held in Pittsburg, on 
the seventh of September, 1791, resolutions were 
adopted denouncing the tax as "operating on a 
domestic manufacture — a manufacture not equal 
through the States. It is insulting to the feelings 
of the people to have their vessels marked, houses 
painted and ransacked, to be subject to informers 
gaining by the occasional delinquency of others. 
It is a bad precedent, tending to introduce the ex- 
cise laws of Great Britain and of countries where 
the liberty, property and even the morals of the 
people are sported with to gratify particular men 
in their ambitious and interested measures." 
The duties were likewise denounced as injurious 
to agricultural interests. 

So far as refusal to obey the excise law, and 
defiance of the Federal officers empowered to 
enforce it, constituted rebellion, the western 
counties of Pennsylvania were in a condition of 
rebellion for over three years. President Wash- 
ington was patient ; the Congress was conciliatory ; 
the State authorities were more than tolerant. 
General John Neville, a man of great wealth and 
well-deserved popularity, accepted the office of In- 
spector of the Revenue. Had he been discovered 
guilty of a monstrous crime, his popularity could 
not have more rapidly waned. Albert Gallatin, 
Brackenridge and other men, respected not only 
in Pennsylvania, but wherever known in the 
country at large, took counsel, and appeared to 
take sides with the multitude in their opposition 
to the national law. Their motives have been 
variously interpreted, according to prejudice or 
favor, but Marshall, in his "Life of Washing- 
ton, ' ' gave the fair and reasonable view of their 
position when he said that "men of property and 



178 The Land We Live In. 

intelligence who had contributed to kindle the 
flame, under the common error of being able to 
regulate its heat, trembled at the extent of the 
conflagration. But it had passed the limits 
assigned to it, and was no longer subject to their 
control. ' ' 

The crowning outrage was the burning of In- 
spector Neville's house, in July, 1794. The 
inspector made his escape to Pittsburg. He 
and the United States Marshal were compelled to 
flee from the town, and on the first of August 
following, seven thousand armed men assembled 
at Braddock's Field and marched from thence 
into Pittsburg. All these men were not hostile 
to the laws and authority of the United States; 
many were compelled by threats of violence to go 
with the majority; not a few were present to 
restrain the reckless from breaking into open 
insurrection. 

President Washington deemed that the time 
for action had come. He called upon the States 
of New Jersey and Pennsylvania for a force of 
militia sufficient to crush the insurrection, while 
at the same time he proclaimed amnesty to all 
who should certify by their signatures their 
readiness to sustain the government. The insur- 
gents suddenly awakened to the knowledge that 
they had now the whole power of the United 
States against them, directed by that arm in- 
vulnerable alike to Indian, Frenchman and 
Briton. Multitudes came to their senses, and 
signed the pledge that saved them from punish- 
ment. Among these were many who had com- 
mitted the gravest disorders. The United States 
forces, however, marched into the western coun- 
ties, and the disturbed region was prostrate under 
military law. 

Old residents of Pittsburg have not yet for- 
gotten the traditions of "The Dreadful Night" — 
the thirteenth of November, 1794. Without a 



The , Land We Live In. 179 

moment's warning hundreds of citizens were 
arrested in Allegheny and the adjoining counties, 
dragged from their beds, and hurried away, half 
naked, from their frantic wives and weeping 
children. The arrests, in numerous instances, 
were attended with every circumstance of bar- 
barity short of death. Prisoners were goaded, 
with shoeless and bleeding feet, on the road to 
Pittsburg; numbers of them were tied back to 
back, and thrown into a wet cellar as a place of 
detention. One man, whose child was dying, 
came forward voluntarily when the arrests were 
being made, hoping that humanity would prompt 
his release on a statement of his condition. He, 
too, was tied, and thrown in with the rest. When 
he obtained his liberty his child was dead. 
Among the prisoners was George Robinson, chief 
burgess of Pittsburg, a peaceable law-abiding 
man, who had never taken an}' share in the agita- 
tion against the excise. Brigadier-General White 
appears to have been chiefly responsible for the 
brutal treatment of the captives. When one of 
them, a veteran of the Revolution, lagged behind, 
owing to physical infirmity, White ordered him 
fastened to a horse's tail, and dragged along. 
The cruel command was not obeyed. On the 
following day, of about three hundred prisoners, 
all but ten were discharged, there being no evi- 
dence against the others. Of eighteen alleged 
offenders who were sent to 'Philadelphia, and 
marched through the streets, with the label "In- 
surgent" on their hats, but two were found guilty 
of crime. One was convicted of arson, another 
of robbing the United States mail, when the mail 
was intercepted with a view of capturing letters 
from the Federal officers in the western counties 
to the authorities at the capital. In both 
instances President Washington granted first a 
reprieve, then a pardon. 

Alexander Hamilton held an inquisitorial 



i8o Tlie Land We Live In. 

investigation to ascertain whether a blow had been 
meditated at the republic, and its form of gov- 
ernment, under the guise of opposition to the 
revenue. He was evidently satisfied that there 
was no deeper plot than appeared on the surface, 
and that, apart from their whiskey-stills, the 
hearts of the West Pennsylvanians beat true to 
the Union. 



Independence Vindicated. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Arrogance of France — Americans and Louis XVI — Genet 
Defies Washingfton— The People Support the President- 
War With the Indians— Defeat of St. Clair— Indians State 
Their Case— General Wayne Defeats the Savages — Jay's 
Treaty — Retirement of Washington — His Character — His 
Military Genius— Washington as a Statesman— His Views 
on Slavery— His Figure in History. 

The American nation had yet to win something 
besides independence, something without which 
independence would be a burden and a mockery — 
the respect of other nations; and in dealings be- 
tween nations fear and respect are closely akin. 
The English still occupied posts within territor}- 
claimed by the United States, the Indians denied 
the right of the Americans to lands beyond the 
Ohio, and republican France, having beheaded 
her king, regarded the United States as a vassal 
on account of the debt of gratitude which America 
owed to that king. War with England had given 
place to jealous and intolerant rivalry, and 
friendship with France had been succeeded by an 
arrogant assumption of patronage and almost of 
suzerainty menacing to our national independ- 
ence. Such were the clouds that rose above the 
ocean horizon, while the western sky was dark- 
ened by the shadow of Indian hostility as yet far 



The Land We Live hi. i8i 

from contemptible, and directed by able chief- 
tains, like Little Turtle, more than a match in 
the field and in diplomacy for most of their white 
antagonists. These were the circumstances which 
made it apparent to Americans that the Federal 
Constitution had come not a day too soon, which 
welded the nation together like an armor-plate of 
steel against foes on every hand, and taught the 
need of union as it never could have been taught 
amid surroundings of prosperity and peace. 

The French Revolution acquitted the American 
people of all obligations to France. It was not 
to the French people, but to the French king that 
Americans owed the assistance without which the 
war for independence might have ended in 
calamity, and with the exception of the Marquis 
de Lafayette the Frenchmen who were con- 
spicuous as servants of the king in aiding the 
American cause, were foes, not friends of the 
Revolution. The French nation, as such, had no 
more to do with casting the power of France into 
the scales on the side of America than the people 
of Russia had to do with their czar's champion- 
ship of Bulgaria. Had it been in the power of 
Americans to have saved Louis XVI. from the 
scaffold, they would have shown cruel ingratitude 
not to have interfered in his behalf. It was a 
most arrogant and baseless assumption on the 
part of the French democracy to claim credit for 
what the Bourbon king had done in sending his 
army and navy to these shores and supplying 
funds to equip and maintain our troops. It is 
true that the men he sent here were Frenchmen, 
and that the money came from the pockets of the 
people of France, but his will directed the troops, 
and diverted to American use the funds of which 
France was sorely in need. To Louis XVI, , to 
his great minister, Vergennes, to Rochambeau 
and Lafayette, American independence was due, 
so far as it was due to anv human source outside 



i82 The Land We Live In. 

of America. Rochambeau and Lafayette both 
narrowly escaped the fate of their king, and Ver- 
gennes died before the Revolution which would 
have made him either a victim or an emigre.* 
So much for the claims of the first French 
republic that America was ungrateful in not ar- 
raying its forces against embattled Europe in 
defence of the men who slew Louis XVL for 
crimes which others committed. 

It is probable that none save Washington could 
have guided the nation through the perilous ex- 
citement aroused by the efforts of the French 
minister Genet to involve the United States in 
w^ar with England and other powers. For a time 
many cool-headed and able men were carried 
away by the popular enthusiasm in favor of 
France, but Genet presumed too far, when he 
deliberately insulted and defied that national 
authority w^hich the nation itself had created, 
and the American people rallied at length, 
irrespective of party, to the support of the Presi- 
dent. France for the time, abandoned her men- 
acing attitude, only to resume it a few years 
later, with results disastrous to herself. 



However American in feeling, it is impossible 
not to have some sympath}' with the Indians in 
their struggle to retain their hunting-grounds 
beyond the Ohio. Savages as they were, natural 

* During the reign of terror Rochambeau was arrested at 
his estate near Vendome, conducted to Paris, thrown into 
the Conciergerie, and condemned to death. When the car 
came to convey a number of victims to the guillotine, he 
was about to mount it, but the official in charge seeing it 
full thrust him back. " Stand back, old marshal," cried he, 
roughly, "your turn will come by and by." A sudden 
change in jjolitical affairs saved his life, and enabled him to 
return to his home near Vendome. Rochambeau survived 
the Revolution, and received the grand cross of the L,egion 
of Honor and a marshal's pension from the great Napo- 
leou. — From Irving's Life of ll'ashington. 



The Land We Live In. 183, 

right was on their side, and many of the whites 
opposed to them were more savage and inhuman 
than the worst of the redskinned barbarians. 
The massacre of the Christian Indians at Gnaden- 
hutten by a party of frontiersmen was a deed not 
surpassed in atrocity in the annals of any country, 
and far surpassing in deliberate cruelty anything 
charged against the Indian race. It was a pity 
that the actual perpetrators of that dark crime 
did not fall into the hands of warlike Indians, 
instead of the unfortunate William Crawford, the 
leader of a vSubsequent expedition, whose awful 
death by fire was the Indian penalty for the 
Moravian massacre. The masterly ability of 
Little Turtle proved for years a barrier against 
pioneer progress, and the defeat of St. Clair and 
his army in 1791, left the frontiers at the mercy 
of the red men. This defeat was one of the most 
terrible ever suffered at the hands of the Indians, 
and aroused on the part of Washington a display 
of temper which showed how deeply he felt the 
wound inflicted on his country. 

General Anthony Wayne took the place of St. 
Clair as commander, and further hostilities were 
preceded by an attempt at negotiation. It must 
be confessed by any impartial reader that the In- 
dians stated their case calmly, clearly and with 
impressive reasoning. They demanded that 
Americans be removed from the northern side of 
the Ohio, and they averred that treaties pre- 
viously signed by them to the contrary effect had 
been signed under misapprehension. ' ' Brothers, ' ' 
said the Indians, "you have talked to as about 
concessions. It appears strange that you should 
expect any from us, who have only been defend- 
ing our just rights against your invasions. We 
want peace. Restore to us our country, and we 
shall be enemies no longer. " "Your answer." 
said the American commissioners, "amounts to 
a declaration that you will agree to no otber 



184 The Land We Live In. 

boundary than the Ohio. The negotiation is. 
therefore, at an end. " This decision was arrived 
at in August, 1793- Meantime the United States 
escaped the danger which would have been 
brought upon them had Genet succeeded in his 
schemes, and involved America in w^ar with Eng- 
land and Spain, both of which countries were 
prepared to assist the Indians, had the Americans 
taken the side of France. Active hostilities were 
not resumed in the Northwest, however, until the 
summer of 1794, when General Wayne, at the 
head of his troops, again attempted to secure a 
peaceful settlement of the Indian troubles, and 
failing in that attacked and defeated the Indians 
near the rapids of the Maumee, a few miles from 
the Miam. Fort,.^ which the English had estab- 
lished within the American territory. Little 
Turtle, who led the Indians, had been in favor of 
peace, but was overborne b}^ more impetuous 
warriors. Peace soon follow^ed, and the settle- 
ment of the Northwest proceeded for a time 
without interruption. Those who regard the In- 
dians as a lazy and thriftless race should read what 
General Wayne says about them: "The very ex- 
tensive and liighl}^ cultivated fields and gardens 
show the work of many hands. The margins of 
these beautiful rivers appear like a continued 
village for a number of miles. Nor have I ever 
before beheld such immense fields of corn in any 
part of America, from Canada to Florida." 



Jay's Treaty, so-called from John Jay, who 
acted on behalf of the United States in negotiat- 
ing the measure, secured a temporary and un- 
satisfactory adjustment of the differences between 
the United States and Great Britain. The fact 
that Washington was willing to approve the 
treaty, although dissatisfied with it, is its suffi- 
cient vindication, and the agreement on the part 



The Land We Live In. 185 

of England to surrender the western posts was no 
small advantage for the United States, especially 
in the impression which it produced on the 
[ndians of the decline of British and the growth 
of American power. The worst features of the 
treaty were that it restricted the commerce of the 
United States, so far as concerned molasses, 
sugar, coffee, cocoa and cotton, the last-mentioned 
article being already a product of the United 
States, and that it failed to protect the seamen 
on American vessels against seizure and impress- 
ment by the British. It was, taken as a whole, 
a humiliating compact, and in its commercial 
provisions an abandonment of the principle which 
inspired the Boston Tea Party, and for which 
Americans had fought in the war of independence. 
The mutual freedom of intercourse and internal 
trading, including common navigation of the 
Mississippi, was advantageous only to Great 
Britain, which country, as subsequent events 
showed, had not given up hope of reconquering 
the trans-Ohio region, and carrying British 
dominion from the Lakes to Mobile. 

The United States had to do something, however, 
to show that the American Republic was not either 
secretly or openly an ally of the French Republic 
against the remainder of Europe, and while the Jay 
Treaty was not what Washington and the Ameri- 
can people desired, it was all that England would 
agree to. As a ynodus Vivendi with our only 
dangerous neighbor it enabled the American 
people to devote to domestic development the 
energies which would otherwise have been ex- 
pended in war, and to grasp the neutral carrying 
trade upon which war would have placed an em- 
bargo. England would doubtless have been 
gratified with any plausible excuse that would 
have enabled her to destroy American commerce, 
and to be without a rival on the Atlantic. Jay's 
Treaty prevented this, and England had to leave 



i86 The Land We Live In. 

to her friends, the Barbary pirates, the work of 
preying on the American carrying trade in. 
European waters.* These depredations were al- 
ready so serious in 1794 that a bill was introduced 
in Congress, passed after some opposition, and 
cordially approved by President Washington, 
providing for a force of six frigates to protect 
American commerce from the corsairs. These 
frigates did splendid service later on, not only 
against the pirates, but also against the French 
and British. 



The scenes which attended the close of Wash- 
ington's public career were some compensation 
to that ever-illustrious man for the wounds in- 
flicted during his administration by reckless and 
venomous partisanship. No President of the 
United States was ever more fiercely and bitterly 
assailed than Washington. His enemies even 
went so far as to doom him in caricature to the 
fate of Louis XVI. He was accused of monarchi- 
cal designs, and had to confront treachery in his 
Cabinet and scurrilous slanders in the public 
press. Yet throughout all he bore himself with 
patience, and never swerved from the course 
which he deemed best for the public weal. It 
should not be supposed that he was indifferent to 
the arrows of malice and of falsehood. On the 
contrary, he was extremely sensitive to them ; 
but he never permitted himself, in public at least, 
to be carried away by his feelings, and no matter 
how strong his sentiments on any subject, his 
sense of justice was always supreme. In his 



* As early as 1784 I^ord Sheffield said in Parliament : " It 
is not probable that the American States will have a very- 
free trade in the Mediterranean. It will not be to the 
interest of any of the great maritime powers to protect 
them from the Barbary States. If they know their interests, 
they will not encourage American carriers." 



The Land JVe Live Ln. 187 

■agony upon the news of St. Clair's defeat, he 
denounced that general as worse than a murderer 
for having suffered his army to be taken by sur- 
prise; but when the burst of passion was over he 
added: "General St. Clair shall have justice. I 
-will receive him without displeasure; I will hear 
him without prejudice." And Washington kept 
his word. 

Far abler pens than mine have dealt with the 
character of the Father of our Republic, but a 
few plain and original expressions on a subject 
never wearisome to Americans may not be out of 
place. Washington's chief characteristics were 
fortitude, the sense of justice of which I have 
.spoken, and the ability to grasp conditions and 
seize upon opportunities. He was a thoroughly 
practical man, a strategist by instinct, fearless 
but not rash, possessing an impetuous temper 
Icept within careful control, and unleashed only 
when, as at the battle of Monmouth, there was 
prudence in its vehemence. He was an excellent 
judge of men. The officers who owed their ad- 
vancement to Washington seldom disappointed 
and often exceeded expectations. He was above 
Ihe petty jealousy, so conspicuous in our late 
civil war, that would permit another general to 
be defeated in order to shine by contrast. He 
was devoted to the cause more than to winning 
personal reputation, and the effect of his un- 
selfishness was that the cause triumphed with his 
name fixed in history as that of its leader and 
champion. 

It is difficult to compare the military achieve- 
■ments of Washington with those of Old World 
•commanders. Marlborough, Wellington and Na- 
poleon had troops thoroughly organized, under 
•complete military control, and held to service by 
iron rules which made the general always sure 
that his military machine would be ready for 
use, barring the chances of war. Washington's 



i88 The Land We Live In. 

forces were largely composed of militia, enlisted 
for short periods, many of them induced to serve 
by bounties, and anxious to go home and attend 
to their farms.* The soldiers, too, were shame- 
fully neglected by Congress and by their States, 
and it seems wonderful that Washington should 
have kept them together as he did, or maintained 
an army at all. In this respect Washington 
showed genius as a military manager without 
parallel in history. It should not be forgotten, 
also, that to Washington is largely due credit for 
victories at which he was not present. His was 
the master mind which scanned the entire field, 
directed all operations and made the triumphs of 
others 'possible. His closing campaign, which 
ended m the surrender of Cornwallis, exhibited 
military talent of the highest order. In concep- 
tion and execution it was equal to any of Napo- 
leon's campaigns. It embraced an extent of 
territory, from New York to North Carolina 
inclusive, as extensive as the present German 
empire, and every movement was that of a master 
hand on the chess-board of war. Success without 
the French would have been impossible, without 
Greene's admirable generalship it might have 
been impossible, but Washin^on conceived and 
carried through to accomplishment the whole 
great scheme which resulted in a ?inal and crush- 
ing blow to British hopes of subjugating 
America.! 



* Mr. William L. Stone, the historical writer, recently 
published the diary of a relative who served a few months 
in the Revolution, and who received ten sheep for enlisting-. 
The soldier in question appears to have been in the habtt 
of going home whenever he felt like it to cultivate his crops. 

Governor Clinton said of the militia : "They come in the 
morning and return in the evening, and I never know 
when I have them, or what my strength is." — Letter to the 
New York Council of Safety . 

tM. Barb6 Marbois, who was Secretary of the French 
Legation in the United States during the Revolution, says 
of Washington : " The sound judgment of Washington, his 



Hie Land IVe Live In. 189 

As a statesman Washington merited distinction 
fully equal to that gained in his military career. 
To him the United States were always a nation, 
and only as a nation could they exist. His in- 
fluence was as potent in forming the Union as 
his military genius had been in achieving inde- 
pendence, and the veneration with which he was 
regarded abroad secured for the new nation a 
degree of respect in foreign cabinets, which was 
almost vital to its existence, and which no other 
American could have commanded. At home, 
too, he rose superior to the discord of ambitious 
men and of rival factions, and those who, like 
Edmund Randolph, attempted to belittle him, 
only called attention thereby to their own com- 
parative unworthiness and insignificance, and 
were glad in later years to seek oblivion for their 
abortive folly. 

In his domestic life Washington was one of the 
best of husbands, as he was blessed with one of 
the best of wives. He held slaves, and I have 
never been of those who claim that he regarded 
slavery with serious disapproval. He was too 
conscientious a man to have retained a single 
slave in his possession or under his control if his 
conscience did not approve the relation. That 
Washington favored the gradual abolition of 
slavery his letters leave no doubt, and especially 

steadiness and ability, had long since elevated him above all 
his rivals and far beyond the reach of envy. His enemies 
still labored, however, to fasten upon him, as a general, the 
reproach of mediocrity. It is true that the military career 
of this great man is not marked by any of those achieve- 
ments which seem prodigious, and of which the splendor 
dazzles and astonishes the universe, but sublime virtues 
unsullied with the least stain are a species of prodigy. His 
conduct throughout the whole course of the war invariably 
attracted and deserved the veneration and confidence of his 
fellow-citizens. The good of his country was the sole end 
of his exertions, never personal glory. In war and in 
peace, Washington is in my eyes the most perfect model 
that can be offered to those who would devote themselves to 
the service of their country and assert the cause of liberty." 



190 The Land We Live Ln. 

those to John F. Mercer and Lawrence Lewis, 
quoted by Washington Irving, but in the letter- 
book of the great Rhode Island merchant, Moses 
Brown, which I was allowed, some years ago, to 
examine, I read a letter from General Washing- 
ton which, as I remember, indicated Washing- 
ton's anti-slavery opinions to be more abstract 
than active, and conveyed distinctly the impres- 
sion that he saw nothing wrong whatever in the 
holding of human chattels. Washington's views 
on slavery were those of a Southern planter of 
the most enlightened class, and the provisions 
which he made in his will for the emancipation of 
his slaves on the decease of his wife, and for the 
care of those who might be unable to support 
themselves, showed that no color-line narrowed 
his sense of justice and of humanit3^ 

The fame of Washington has not lost in bril- 
liancy since he passed from the world in which 
he acted such a providential part. Like the 
Phidian Zeus his proportions are all the more 
majestic for the distance which rounds over any 
venial defect. His example is as valuable to the 
American Republic of the present as his life-work 
was to the America of a century ago. As water 
never rises above its source, so a great nation 
should have a great founder, and the figure of 
Washington is sublime enough to be the ori- 
flamme of a people's empire bounded only by 
the oceans which wash the land that he loved. 



The Lajid We Live Ifi^ 191 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

John Adams President — Jefferson and the French Revolu- 
tion — The French Directory — Money Demanded from 
America — "Millions for Defence; Not One Penny for 
Tribute" — Naval Warfare with France — Capture of the 
Insurgent — Defeat of the Vengeance — Peace with 
France — Death of Washington — Alien and Sedition I^aws 
— Jefferson President — The I^ouisiana Purchase — Burr's 
Alleged Treason — War with the Barbary States— England 
Behind the Pirates— Heroic Naval Exploits— Carrying 
War Into Africa — Peace with Honor. 

The Jay treaty secured peace with England, 
but it was accepted as almost a declaration of 
war by France. The attitude of the French gov- 
ernment did not become intolerable until after 
the retirement of Washington from the presi- 
dency. John Adams, who succeeded Washington, 
belonged to the Federalist party, which supported 
a strong central government with aristocratic 
tendencies, and was opposed to the Republican 
party, which sympathized with the French Revo- 
lution, and whose members were, therefore, 
known also as ' ' Democrats. ' ' Alexander Hamil- 
ton was the chief spirit of the Federalists and 
Thomas Jefferson of the Republicans. The intense 
Jacobinism of Jefferson's views may be judged 
from some of his utterances, in which he even 
defended the terrible September massacres of the 
French Revolution. Speaking of the innocent 
who perished he said : " I deplore them as I 
should have done had they fallen in battle. It 
was necessary to use the arm of the people, a 
machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs, 
but blind to a certain degree. A few of their 
cordial friends met at their hands the fate of 
enemies. * * * My own affections have been 
deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this 
cause, but rather than it should have failed, I 
would have seen half the earth desolated ; were 



192 The Land We Live Ln. 

there but an Adam and an Eve left in every 
country, and left free, it would be better than it 
is now. ' ' 

The spread of these ideas shocked and alarmed 
conservative men, including Washington him- 
self, Hamilton and Adams, and led to measures 
of restriction that were injudicious in their 
severity. The nation, however, united as one 
man, irrespective of party, to resent the intoler- 
able insolence of the French, who assumed that 
they could crush America with the same ease that 
they subdued the petty states of Italy and Ger- 
many. The French Directory, which had suc- 
ceeded to the Terrorists in the exercise of power 
virtually supreme, was composed of men whose 
depravity we have seen shockingly illustrated 
in the recently published memoirs of Barras. Its 
foreign policy was managed by the vulpine 
Talleyrand, who is accused by Barras of having 
extorted large sums of money from the lesser 
States of Europe as the price of being let alone 
— although it is extremely probable that Barras 
and others of the Directory shared in these ill- 
gotten funds. Talleyrand tried to extort similar 
tribute from America, demanding that a douceur 
of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars be put 
at his disposal for the use of the Directory, and 
a large loan made by America to France. "Mil- 
lions for defence — not one penny for tribute!" 
was the cry that went up from the American 
people when this infamous proposition was made 
known. 

Washington was summoned from his retire- 
ment to take command of the American army, 
a Secretary of the Navy was added to the 
President's Cabinet — Benjamin Stoddart, of 
Georgetown, D. C. , being the first — and the new 
American navy was authorized to retaliate upon 
France for outrages committed upon American 
shipping. A vigorous naval warfare followed, in 



The Land We Live In. 193, 

which the new American frigates proved more 
than a match for the French. The American 
Constellation, forty-eight guns, after a sharp 
engagement, captured the French frigate Insur- 
gent, forty guns. It is really amusing to note 
the tone of injured innocence in which Captain 
Barreaut, of the Insurgent, who had himself cap- 
tured the American cruiser Retaliation but a 
short time before, reports to his government his 
"surprise on finding himself fought by an Ameri- 
can frigate after all the friendship and protection 
accorded to the United States!" "My indigna- 
tion," he adds, "was at its height." It soon 
cooled off, however, under the pressure of broad- 
sides from the Constellation, and Captain Barreaut 
was glad to surrender. The second frigate action 
of the war was between the Constellation and the 
Vengeance, the former fifty guns, the latter fifty- 
two. The Frenchman, badly beaten, succeeded 
in making his escape. The battle between the 
American frigate Boston and the French corvette 
Berceau was one of the most gallant of the 
struggle, the Berceau fighting until resistance 
was hopeless. American merchantmen also 
showed the French that they could defend them- 
selves, and one of Moses Brown's ships, the 
Anne and Hope, sailed into Providence from a 
voyage to the West Indies, bearing in her rigging 
the marks of conflict with a French privateer, 
whom the merchantman had bravely repulsed. 
During the two years and a half of naval war 
with France eighty-four armed French vessels, 
nearl)' all of them privateers, were captured, 
and no vessel of our navy was taken by the 
enemy, except the Retaliation. This was not the 
kind of tribute the French government had ex- 
pected, and a treaty of peace, which entirely 
sustained the position of the United States, was 
ratified in February, 1801. 



13 



J 94 The Land We Live In. 

The illustrious "Washington, who fortunately 
had not been required to take the field against 
America's ancient allies, died December 14, 1799, 
at Mount Vernon, deepl}' mourned by all his 
countrymen, and honored even by the former 
enemies of American independence. I will only 
repeat, with Washington Irving, that "with us 
his memory remains a national property, where 
all sympathies throughout our widely extended 
and diversified empire meet in unison. Under 
all dissensions and amid all the storms of party, 
his precepts and example speak to us from the 
grave with a paternal appeal ; and his name — by 
all revered — forms a universal tie of brother- 
hood — a watchword of our Union. " 



While the nation heartily sustained the govern- 
ment in the conflict with France the enactment 
of the Alien and Sedition Laws, which abridged 
American liberty and the freedom of speech and 
of the press, was generally resented by the people. 
The public indignation which these laws aroused 
resulted in the banishment of the Federalist 
party from power, and the election of the great 
Republican — or Democrat — Thomas Jefferson, as 
President in 1800, with Aaron Burr as Vice-Presi- 
dent. JefFerson was the first President inaugurated 
in the city of Washington. The leading features of 
his administration were the Louisiana Purchase, 
the Burr conspiracy and the war with the Barbary 
States — the first alone sufficient to make Jeffer- 
son's presidency the most memorable between 
that of Washington and Abraham Lincoln. 

Jeiferson's foresight in the Louisiana Purchase 
appears all the grander when we consider the 
ignorance which prevailed regarding the magni- 
ficent Pacific region up to the birth of a genera- 
tion which is still in middle life. The Louisiana 
Purchase was the second great gift of France to 



The Land We Live In 195, 

America, and as the first came to us because the 
French hated and desired to weaken England, so> 
the second came because Napoleon feared that 
Louisiana would fall into the hands of England. 
It should be remembered that the Louisiana Pur- 
chase included not only the now flourishing State 
at the mouth of the Mississippi, but also Ar- 
kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, 
Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and probably 
the two Dakotas. It meant the control of the 
Mississippi and the rescue of that great arter}' of 
American commerce forever from foreign domin- 
ion. France had acquired this vast property from 
Spain in 1800. The Amiens Treaty of 1802, to 
which France and England were the principal 
parties, was short lived, and for some time before 
the new rupture Napoleon saw that it would be 
his best policy to concentrate his strength in 
Europe, and not endeavor to defend distant 
possessions in America. At the same time it was 
evident to President Jefferson that the continued 
occupation of the city of New Orleans by a 
foreign power was a menace to American interests 
in the rapidly growing West. The President 
therefore instructed Robert R. Livingston, the 
American Minister to Paris, to propose to Napo- 
leon the cession to the United States of New 
Orleans and adjoining territor}^ sufficient to 
secure the free navigation of the Mississippi. 
James Monroe, American Minister to England, 
was associated with Livingston in the negotia- 
tions. The American representatives were sur- 
prised and elated upon learning from M. Barbe- 
Marbois, Napoleon's Minister of Finance, that 
the First Consul was ready to dispose of all 
Louisiana to the United vStates. Barbe-Marbois 
conducted the negotiations on behalf of France ; 
both parties were anxious to arrive at a settle- 
ment before the English should have an oppor- 
tunity to attack New Orleans, and on April 30. 



196 The Land We Live In. 

1803, the treaty was signed by which the United 
States, for the sum of I15, 000,000, came into 
possession of an immense territory extending 
from the North Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. 
The loan necessary was negotiated through the 
celebrated house of Hope, of Amsterdam, the 
money was paid to France, and the United States 
entered upon its vast estate. 

The very next year President Jefferson sent out 
the expedition of Lewis and Clark to the head- 
waters of the Columbia River, and caused a 
complete survey to be made to its mouth. This 
river had been discovered in 1792, by Captain 
Robert Gray, a native of Tiverton, Rhode Island, 
and a famous navigator, who sailed in a ship 
fitted out by Boston merchants. Had Jefferson's 
energetic action been followed up with equal 
vigor by his successors we would never have had 
the Oregon boundary dispute, and Marcus Whit- 
man would never have felt summoned to take 
that famous ride so worthily chronicled by Oliver 
W. Nixon. 



With Aaron Burr's alleged treason I will deal 
very briefly. It will always be a disputed point 
whether that restless and unprincipled and yet 
gifted person plotted to alienate territory of the 
United States, or only to play the part of a 
Northman in territory belonging to Spain. Ad- 
mitting Burr to be innocent of designs against 
the United States, he was nevertheless guilty of 
quasi-treason if he schemed to erect a separate 
government within Spanish possessions to which 
the American Republic was already heir apparent. 
The murder of Alexander Hamilton by Burr under 
the forms of a duel, which preceded his mysteri- 
ous expedition in the southwest, and his subse- 
quent attempt to claim British allegiance on the 
ground that he had been a Brici'ih subject before 



The Land We Live Ln. 197 

the Revolution, were other extraordinary inci- 
dents in the career of a man in whom distin- 
guished talents were utterly without the anchor 
of morality. 



No war in which the United States has been 
engaged witnessed more heroic deeds than that 
with the Barbary States. It was a struggle in 
which the youngest of civilized nations met the 
semi-barbarous masters of Northern Africa, the 
heirs of Mahomet and conquerors of the Con- 
stantines. Attended by the loss of some precious 
lives, which were deeply mourned and are grate- 
fully remembered, the chastisement of the corsairs 
proved excellent schooling for the more serious, 
war with Great Britain. The struggle with the 
pirates was largely due to the hostile influence 
exerted by England with a view to the destruc- 
tion of American commerce. In 1793 the British 
government actually procured a truce between 
Algiers and Portugal, in order that the Algerians 
might have free rein in preying upon American 
and other merchantmen, and it may be said that 
piracy in the Mediterranean was under British 
protection. The American people for a time 
paid the tribute which the pirates demanded, but 
at length revolted against the indignity. The 
war began with disaster. The American frigate 
Philadelphia, Captain William Bainbridge, ran 
on a reef in the harbor of Tripoli, and all on 
board were made prisoners. The Bashaw held 
his captives for ransom, and treated them some- 
times with indulgence and at other times with 
severity, as he thought best for his interests. It 
vshould not be forgotten by the American people 
that Mr. Nissen, the Danish consul, devoted 
himself assiduously to the welfare of the prisoners, 
and was instrumental in many ways in assisting 
the American cause, while Captain Bainbridge 



198 The Land We Live In. 

also managed to give most valuable information 
to Captain Edward Preble, in command of the 
American squadron. 

One suggestion made by Captain Bainbridge 
was that the Philadelphia, which the Tripolitans 
had succeeded in raising, should be destroyed 
at her anchorage in the harbor. The youthful 
Lieutenant Decatur headed this perilous enter- 
prise. With the officers and men under his 
command, including Lieutenant James Lawrence 
and others afterward distinguished in American 
naval history, Decatur entered the harbor at 
night in a small vessel or "ketch" called the 
Mastico, disguised as a trader from Malta. The 
watchword was " Philadelphia," and strict or- 
ders were given not to discharge any firearms, 
^except in great emergency. A challenge from 
the Tripolitans on the Philadelphia was met 
by a statement from the Maltese pilot that the 
Mastico had just arrived from Malta, had been 
damaged in a gale, and lost her anchors, and 
desired to make fast to the frigate's cables until 
another anchor could be procured. The Turks 
lowered a boat with a hawser, intending to secure 
the ketch to their stern, instead of to the cables, 
and the Americans accepted the hawser, inti- 
mating in broken Italian that they would do as 
desired. At the same time the Americans made 
fast to the Philadelphia's fore chains, and a 
strong pull by the men, who were mostly lying 
down in order to remain unseen b}^ the Turks, 
swung the ketch alongside the frigate. One of 
the Turks looking over the side saw the men 
hauling on the line, and sent up the cry — 
' 'Americano!" 

The Turks succeeded in severing the line, but 
too late. The Americans sprang for the Phila- 
delphia's deck and charged upon the astonished 
enemy. In ten minutes from the appearance of 
the first American on deck the vessel was in our 



The Land We Live In. 199 

hands. Combustibles were then passed from the 
ketch, and the Philadelphia was set on fire. 
While the Americans safely made their escape 
the burning frigate lighted up the harbor, and 
her shotted guns boomed warning to the Bashaw 
of what he might yet expect from American 
courage and daring. Of the Tripolitans on board 
the Philadelphia many doubtless perished, and 
some swam ashore. Only one prisoner was taken, 
a wounded Tripolitan, who swam to the ketch, 
and whose life was spared, notwithstanding strict 
orders not to take prisoners. 

The Bashaw treated his captives more rigorously 
than ever, after this splendid exploit, fearing 
apparently that they might rise and capture his 
own castle — a fear not without foundation, as a 
rising with chat object was for some time con- 
templated. The ketch in which Decatur made 
his daring and successful expedition was christ- 
ened the Intrepid, and fitted up as a floating 
mine with the purpose of sending her into the 
harbor, and exploding her in the midst of the 
Tripolitan shipping. It was an enterprise likely 
to be attended by the destruction of all engaged 
in it, but volunteers were not lacking. Master- 
Commandant Richard Somers, Decatur's bosom 
friend, was in charge and Midshipman Henry 
Wadsworth, uncle of the poet Longfellow, was 
second in command. Midshipman Joseph Israel 
also managed to get on the ketch unobserved, 
and was permitted to remain. The crew consisted 
of ten seamen from the Nautilus and the Con- 
stitution, all volunteers. The fate of these gallant 
men was never known, except that it is certain 
that they all perished upon the explosion of the 
Intrepid. Bodies found mangled beyond recog- 
nition were unquestionably the remains of these 
heroes, and were buried on the beach outside the 
town of Tripoli. 

The attack was conducted with unceasing vigor. 



200 The Land We Live Ln. 

not only on sea, but on land, the Americans 
literally carrying the war into Africa by incit- 
ing Hatnet, the deposed Bashaw of Tripoli, 
to attack the brother who had usurped his 
throne. William Eaton, the American consul 
at Tunis, led Hamet's army, and with the co- 
operation of the fleet, made a successful attack 
upon Derne, the capital of the richest province 
of Tripoli. The loss of this important fortress 
brought the reigning Bashaw to terms, and he 
signed a treaty giving up all claims to tribute, 
and releasing the American prisoners on payment 
of sixty thousand dollars. A most advantageous 
peace was likewise dictated to the Bey of Tunis,' 
who had also been induced by English influences 
to assume a menacing attitude toward the Ameri- 
cans, and the schemes of Great Britain to prevent, 
through the agency of Barbary pirates, the growth 
of American commerce, were disappointed. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

French Decrees and British Orders in Council— Damage to 
American Commerce — The Embargo — Causes of the War 
of 1812 — The Chesapeake and the Leopard — Presi- 
dent and Little Belt— War Declared— Mr Astor's Messen- 
ger — The Two Navies Compared — American Frigate 
Victories — Constitution and Guerriere — United States 
and Macedonian — Constitution and Java — American Sloop 
Victories— The Shannon and Chesapeake— " Don't Give 
Up the Ship." 

The Barbary pirates had been brought to terms, 
but American commerce was being severel}' 
handled between French decrees and British 
orders in council. England had declared a 
hlockade of all the coasts of Europe under the 
control of France, and Napoleon from his camp 
at Berlin and his palace at Milan retaliated by 
making British products contraband of war and 



The Land We Live Ln. 201 

subjecting to confiscation all vessels destined for 
British ports. Between these two mighty mill- 
stones the American carrying trade was sorely 
ground, and conditions were made far worse by 
the very means which the American government, 
in its comparative impotency, adopted to compel 
redress. The embargo was intended to inflict 
such injury on both France and England as to 
drive them into a recognition of America's rights 
as a neutral. Its only serious effect was to inflict 
an almost fatal wound on American commerce, 
and the repeal of the first embargo came too late 
to undo the injury it had done. It was not as 
clearly apparent then as now that all restrictions 
on exportation chiefly injure the nation which 
imposes them. The embargo played into the 
hands of the British by effecting through our own 
agency what England had vainly sought to ac- 
complish through others. England commanding 
every sea with her fleets suffered but slight in- 
convenience by the withdrawal of American 
shipping from her ports, while Americans 
suffered most severely. 

The British blockade of continental Europe 
would not, however, have led to the conflict which 
broke out in 1812, Other aggressions, offensive 
to American independence, and in grievous 
violation of American national rights, obliged 
Congress reluctantly to declare war, after years 
of irritation and provocation on the part of Eng- 
land. The British stopped American vessels on 
the high seas, and impressed American seamen 
into the British naval service. American mer- 
chantmen were halted in mid-ocean and de- 
prived of the best men in their crews, who were 
forced to serve in the British navy.* 

* In the famous sea-fight between the American frigate 
United States and the British frigate Macedonian several 
American seamen on the British vessel, through their 
spokesman, John Card, who was described by one of his- 



:202 The Land We Live In. 

Thousands of American seamen were thus im- 
pressed, while American vessels were seized by 
Eritish cruisers, taken to port and unloaded and 
searched for contraband of war. The Leopard- 
Chesapeake affair was a crowning outrage on the 
part of the British, and had it not been promptly 
disavowed by the government at London, war 
would have been declared in 1807 instead of 1812. 
The Chesapeake, an American frigate of thirty- 
six guns, commanded by Captain James Barron, 
was hailed by the English fitty-gun frigate. Leo- 
pard, Captain Humphreys, in the open sea. The 
latter sent a lieutenant on board the Chesapeake, 
who handed to Captain Barron an order signed by 
the British Vice-Admiral Berkeley, directing all 
commanders in Berkeley's squadron to board the 
Chesapeake wherever found on the high seas, and 
search the vessel for deserters. Captain Barron's 
ship was utterly unprepared for battle, but he 
gave orders to clear for action. So shameful was 
the lack of preparation on the Chesapeake that 
not a gun could be discharged until Lieutenant 
William Henry Allen seized a live coal from the 
galley fire with his fingers and sent a shot in 
response to repeated broadsides from the Leopard. 
The Chesapeake hauled down her flag after 
losing three killed and eighteen wounded. The 
British then boarded the vessel and carried off 
four of the crew, who were claimed as British 
deserters, although they all asserted to the last 
that they were American citizens. One of these 
men, Jenkin Ratford or John Wilson, was hanged 



shipmates as being " as brave a seamen as ever trod a 
plank," frankly told Captain Garden their objections to 
fighting the American flag. The British commander 
savagely ordered them back to their quarters, threatening 
to shoot them if they again made the request. Half an hour 
later Jack Card was stretched out on the Macedonian's deck 
weltering in his blood, slain by a shot from his country- 
men.— A/a<:/a_y'i- History of the United States Navy, D. Apple- 
Jon & Co. 



The Land We Live Ln. ' 20 j 

at the yard-arm of the British man-of-war 
Halifax. The other three were sentenced each to 
receive five hundred lashes, but the sentences 
were not carried out, and two of them, the third 
having died, were returned on board the Chesa- 
peake. Some indemnity was paid and the British 
government recalled Vice- Admiral Berkeley. 

The British continued to impress Americans 
into their service, and to annoy American, 
shipping, and the American temper was gradually 
becoming inflamed under repeated provocations. 
Nevertheless there was a powerful sentiment op- 
posed to war in the State of New York and in 
New England, and the people generally hesitated 
to believe that war would be declared. In 181 1 
the American frigate President avenged in some 
degree the Leopard outrage by severely chastising 
the British twenty-two-gun ship Little Belt, 
which lost eleven killed and twenty-one wounded 
in the encounter. The Little Belt appears to 
have fired the first shot. War was at length de- 
clared by Congress, and proclaimed by President 
James Madison, June 18, 1812. 

The news of war with Great Britain was carried 
to New York by a special courier, and American 
merchants at once sent out a swift sailing vessel 
to warn American merchantmen in the ports of 
Northern Europe of the new danger that threat- 
ened them. By this warning many American 
vessels were saved from capture. Very different 
in result, although presumably not in intent, was 
the warning sent by John Jacob Astor, of New 
York, to his agent across the border. Mr. Astor, 
upon receiving the news from Washington, at 
once dispatched a messenger by swiftest express- 
to Queenstown, Canada, with the view of pro-^ 
tecting as speedily as possible Mr. Astor' s fur- 
trading interests. The messenger sped through 
the settlements of w^estern New York, by farms 
and villages calmly reposing in the confidence of 



204 The Land We Live In. 

peace, and without saying a word of his mo- 
mentous secret, he crossed the Niagara River 
with his master's message. The recipient of that 
message was a British subject, and felt bound by 
his allegiance to communicate it to the author- 
ities. The following morning the people of 
Buffalo were surprised to see the Canadians de- 
scend upon their harbor and seize the shipping 
within reach. 



Hostilities were opened promptly on land and 
sea. The American navy consisted only of seven- 
teen vessels, 442 guns and 5025 men, while that 
of Great Britain included 1048 vessels, 27,800 
guns and 151,572 men. It is no wonder that the 
American people hesitated to send forth their 
men-of-war agaiiist such tremendous odds, even 
although England's navy was largely engaged in 
the tremendous conflict with France, or rather in 
keeping Napoleon cribbed and cabined within 
his continental boundaries; and it is no wonder 
that British naval officers assumed to regard with 
contempt the fir-built frigates which bore the 
Stars and Stripes. The defeat and capture of the 
British frigate Guerriere, forty-nine guns. Cap- 
tain Dacres, by the American frigate Constitu- 
tion, fifty-five guns. Captain Isaac Hull, made 
British contempt give place to surprise. In this 
naval battle the Americans proved their super- 
iority in rapidity and accuracy of fire, and it is 
perhaps needless to say that they showed them- 
selves fully the equals of the British in bravery. 
It is pleasant to read in the official report of 
Captain Dacres the following tribute to his 
generous foe : " I feel it my duty to state that the 
conduct of Captain Hull and his officers to our 
men has been that of a brave enemy, the greatest 
•care being taken to prevent our men losing the 
smallest trifle, and the greatest attention being 



The Land We Live In. 205 

paid to the wounded. ' ' The Guerriere lost her 
second lieutenant, Henry Ready, and fourteen 
seamen killed, and Captain Dacres, First Lieu- 
tenant Kent, Sailing Master Scott, two master's 
mates, one midshipman and fifty-seven sailors 
were wounded, six of the wounded afterward 
dying. The Constitution lost her first lieutenant 
of marines, William Sharp Bush, and six seamen 
killed, and her first lieutenant, Charles Morris, 
her sailing master, four seamen and one marine 
were wounded. Thus resulted the first naval 
combat between British and American built men- 
of-war. * 

For rapid and accurate firing and destructive 
effect thereof upon the enemy the records of naval 

* The Constitution may still be seen in the Navy Yard 
at Portsmouth, N. H. The following famous poem, by 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, saved the grand old vessel front 
destruction in 1833 : 

*' Ay, tear the tattered ensign down ! 
Long has it waved on high. 
And many an eye has danced to see 
That banner in the sky ; 
Beneath it rung the battle-shout, 
And burst the cannon's roar — 
The meteor of the ocean air 
Shall sweep the clouds no more. 

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, 

Where knelt the vanquished foe, 

When winds were hurrying o'er the flood 

And waves were white below, 

No more shall feel the victor's tread, 

Or know the conquered knee — 

The harpies of the shore shall pluck 

The eagle of the sea ! 

Oh, better that her shattered hulk 

Should sink beneath the wave ; 

Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 

And there should be her grave ; 

Nail to the mast her holy flag, 

Set every threadbare sail. 

And give her to the god of storm 

The lightning and the gale ! " 



^2o6 The Land We Live Ln. 

warfare probably offer nothing to surpass the 
conduct of the American frigate United States, 
fifty-four guns, Captain Decatur, in battle with 
the British frigate Macedonian, forty-nine guns. 
Captain Carden. "The firing from the American 
frigate at close quarters was terrific. Her cannon 
were handled with such rapidity that there seemed 
to be one continuous flash from her broadside, 
and several times Captain Carden and his officers 
believed her to be on fire.* * * Her firing was 
so rapid that ' in a few minutes she was enveloped 
in a cloud of smoke which from the Macedonian's 
quarter-deck appeared like a huge cloud rolling 
along the water, illuminated by lurid flashes of 
lightning, and emitting a continuous roar of thun- 
der. ' But the unceasing storm of round shot, grape 
and canister, and the occasional glimpse of the 
Stars and Stripes floating above the clouds of 
smoke, forcibly dispelled the illusion, and showed 
the Englishmen that they were dealing with an 
enemy who knew how to strike and who struck 
hard. * * -x- 'Grapeshot and canister were 
pouring through our port holes like leaden hail; 
the large shot came against the ship's side, shak- 
ing her to the very keel, and passing through 
her timbers and scattering terrific splinters, 
which did more appalling work than the shot 
itself. A constant stream of wounded men were 
being hurried to the cockpit from all quarters of 
the'ship. ' And still the American frigate kept 
up her merciless cannonading. As the breeze 
occasionally made a rent in the smoke her officers 
could be seen walking around her quarter-deck 
calmly directing the work of destruction, while 
lier gun -crews were visible through the open ports 
•deliberately loading and aiming their pieces." * 
The action had lasted about an hour and a half, 



* From statements of witnesses on the Macedonian, in 
3Iaclay's " History of the United States Navy." 



The Laftd We Live In, 207- 

when the Macedonian struck. The United States- 
lost five men killed and seven wounded; the 
Macedonian lost thirty-six killed and sixt5'-eight 
wounded. 

The next naval victory was won by Captain 
William Bainbridge, this time in command of 
the Constitution, forty-four guns, over the British 
thirty-eight-gun frigate Java, Captain Henry 
lyambert. The battle began at 2.40 p. m. , and 
at 4.05 p. m., the British frigate was "an un- 
manageable wreck." The Java at length surren- 
dered, having lost sixty killed, besides one 
hundred and one wounded, while the loss of the 
Constitution was nine killed and twenty-five 
wounded. Both commanders were wounded, the 
British captain mortally, and there was a touch- 
ing scene when Captain Bainbridge, supported 
by his officers to the bedside of the dying Lam- 
bert, gave back to the latter his sword. 



The British press foamed almost deliriously 
over these disasters to their navy, which robbed 
of half its luxury the imminent downfall of 
Napoleon. The London "Times" could hardly 
find words to express its emotion over the fact 
that five hundred merchantmen and three frigates 
had been captured in seven months by the Ameri- 
cans. An attempt was made to explain the- 
repeated and astounding defeats on the ocean by 
the plea that the American frigates were almost 
ships of the line in disguise, and that their- 
superior size and armament carried an unfair ad- 
vantage. The same plea could not be offered in 
explanation of the victories won by American 
sloops, in the case of the American Hornet and 
British Peacock, of about equal strength, while- 
the American Wasp was considerably inferior in 
guns and weight of metal to the British Frolic. 
Master-Commandant James Lawrence, of the- 



:2o8 The Lafid We Live In. 

Hornet, captured the Peacock in eleven minutes 
from the beginning of the action, the American 
guns being fired so rapidly that buckets of water 
were constantly dashed on them to keep them 
-cool, A Halifax paper said that ' ' a vessel moored 
for the purpose of experiment could not have 
been sunk sooner. It will not do for our vessels 
to fight theirs single-handed. ' ' The American 
•eighteen-gun sloop-of-war Wasp, Master-Com- 
mandant Jacob Jones, had a longer fight with the 
British brig-of-war Frolic, twenty-two guns. 
Captain Thomas Whinyates. The action lasted 
forty-three minutes from the first broadside, and 
the Frolic was taken by boarding. The Wasp 
had five killed and five wounded, and the Frolic 
fifteen killed and forty-seven wounded. The 
fact is, it was not the number but the handling 
•of the guns that won American victories. 

The capture of the American forty-nine-gun 
frigate Chesapeake, Captain James Lawrence, by 
the British fifty -two-gun frigate Shannon, Captain 
Philip Bowes Vere Broke, consoled the English 
in some degree for their losses, and the very ex- 
ultation with which the news was received in 
Great Britain showed the high estimate which 
the mistress of the seas had formed of the Ameri- 
can navy from previous experience during the 
war. It is but just to the gallant Lawrence to 
say that he had no fair opportunity to prepare 
for battle, that he had the poorest crew — largely 
Portuguese and other riff-raff — ever put on board 
an American man-of-war, and that with a crew 
such as Hull or Decatur or Bainbridge had com- 
manded, or that he had himself commanded on 
the Hornet, he might have recorded a victory 
instead of losing his ship and his life. At the 
same time it must also be admitted that Captain 
Broke was a superb naval officer, and that his 
victory was chiefly due to the perfect discipline 
and devotion of his men, with whom he was 



The Land We Live In. 209 

thoroughly acquainted, whereas Lawrence had 
been but a few days in command of the Chesa- 
peake. When mortall)' wounded and carried 
below, Lawrence cried: "Keep the guns going!" 
"Fight her till she strikes or sinks!" and his 
last words were — "Don't give up the ship!" 
The British boarded the Chesapeake, after a brief 
cannonading. The Americans on board made a 
desperate resistance, and it is a question whether 
there was any formal surrender. The Chesapeake 
lost forty-seven killed and ninety-nine wounded, 
and of the latter fourteen afterward died. The 
Shannon lost twenty-four killed and fifty-nine 
wounded. There could hardly have been greater 
joy in England over a Peninsular victory. 
Parliament acclaimed, the guns of the Tower 
thundered, and Captain Broke was made a 
baronet and a Knight Commander of the Bath. 
America keenly felt the defeat, but honored the 
heroic dead, and a gold medal was voted to the 
nearest male descendant of Captain Lawrence. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

The War on I,and— Tecumseh's Indian Confederacy— Har- 
rison at Tippecanoe — General Hull and General Brock — 
A Fatal A.rmistice — Surrender of Detroit — English Masters 
of Michigan— General Harrison Takes Command in the 
Northwest— Harrison's Answer to Proctor— " He Will 
Never Have This Post Surrendered" — Cro^an's Brave 
Defence— The British Retreat — War on the Niagara Fron- 
tier — Battle of Queenstown — Death of Brock — Colonel 
Winfield Scott and the English Doctrine of Perpetual 
Allegiance. 

The sea victories were a fortunate offset to 
American disasters on land. With the aid of the 
great Indian chieftain Tecumseh, the British set 
out to conquer the Northwest. Tecumseh, chief 
of the Shawaneese, was probably the ablest Indian 

14 



2IO The Land We Live In. 

that the white man had ever met. He resolved 
early in life to make a final stand against the 
progress of the palefaces. His scheme was at 
first not of a warlike nature, for he began with a 
secret council of representative Indians about the 
year 1806, the object of which w^as to form an 
Indian confederacy to prevent the further sale of 
lands to the United States, except by consent of 
the confederacy, which was to include the entire 
Indian population of the Northwest. Thus the 
American Union was to be met by an Indian 
union. Tecumseh had a brother, known in his- 
tory as "The Prophet," who visited the various 
tribes and brought the influence of superstition 
to bear in favor of Tecumseh's projects. Gov- 
ernor William Henry Harrison, whose Territory 
of Indiana included the present States of Indiana, 
Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, viewed Te- 
cumseh's operations with alarm, although assured 
by that chieftain that his intentions were peace- 
ful. In order to remove any just ground for 
discontent Governor Harrison offered to restore 
to the Indians any lands that had not been fairly 
purchased. Tecumseh met Governor Harrison at 
Vincennes, and recited the old story of Indian 
wrongs. After complaining of white duplicity 
in obtaining sales of land, and endeavoring to 
sow strife between the tribes, Tecumseh added : 
"How can we have confidence in the white 
people? When Jesus Christ came upon the earth 
you killed him and nailed him on a cross. You 
thought he was dead, but you were mistaken. 
Everything I have said to you is the truth. The 
Great Spirit has inspired me." The first inter- 
view ended in great excitement, but a second 
meeting, on the following day, was more decorous 
in character. Nothing came of these discussions, 
as Tecumseh's demand for the restoration of all 
Indian lands purchased from single tribes could 
obviously not be granted. Hostilities followed. 



The Lajid We Live In. 211 

and the battle of Tippecanoe was fought during 
the absence of Tecumseh, who on going South to 
visit the Cherokees and other tribes had given 
strict orders to his brother, the Prophet, not to 
attack the Americans. The Indians attempted a 
surprise after midnight, November 7, 1811. They 
fought furiously, and if Harrison had been a 
Braddock, the story of Duquesne might have 
been repeated. But Harrison understood frontier 
warfare, and he directed his men so skillfully, 
although many of them had never been under 
fire before, that the Indians were at length re- 
pulsed. One of Harrison's orders, which prob- 
ably saved his army, was to extinguish the camp- 
fires, so that white and Indian fought in the 
darkness on equal terms. The American loss 
was thirty-seven killed and 151 wounded, and 
that of the Indians somewhat smaller. In effect 
Tippecanoe was a decisive victory for the Ameri- 
cans, and broke the spell in which Tecumseh 
and the Prophet had held the tribes. 



The War of 1812 revived the hopes of the great 
Indian chieftain, and with the rank of brigadier- 
general in the British army he set about to assist 
General Isaac Brock, the Governor of Upper 
Canada, in the task of wresting the Northwest 
from the Americans. General William Hull, an 
uncle of Captain Isaac Hull, the commander of 
the Constitution, was Governor of the Territory 
of Michigan, which had been organized in 1805 
and now contained about 5000 inhabitants. To 
General Hull was given the command of the forces 
intended for defensive and offensive operations 
on the Upper Lakes. A small garrison of United 
States troops was stationed at Michilimacinac 
and one at Chicago, which were the outposts of 
civilization. The English near Detroit appear to 
have been aware of the declaration of war before 



212 The Land We Live Ln. 

the news reached General Hull, and while the 
latter was moving with an extreme caution ex- 
cusable only on the ground of age, Brock swiftly 
laid out and as swiftly entered upon an ag- 
gressive campaign. The American outposts were 
captured by the British and Indians, and the 
garrison of Fort Dearborn— Chicago — was cruelly 
massacred. On this occasion Mr. John Kinzie, 
the first settler at Chicago, who as a trader was 
much liked by the Indians, did noble service, 
with his excellent wife, in saving the lives of the 
soldiers' families. Mrs. Heald, the wife of Cap- 
tain Heald, was ransomed for ten bottles of 
whiskey and a mule, just as an Indian was about 
to scalp her. 

At this critical juncture General Hull was 
weakened, and the British forces opposed to him 
were encouraged by the news that General Henry 
Dearborn, commander of the American troops in 
the Northern Department, instead of invading 
Canada from the Niagara frontier, in obedience 
to his instructions, had agreed to a provisional 
armistice with Sir George Prevost, the governor- 
general of Canada. The ground for the armistice 
was that England had revoked the orders in 
council obnoxious to Americans, five days after 
the declaration of war by the United States, and 
that intended peace negotiations would therefore 
have in all probability a happy result. As a 
matter of fact England had not yielded, and had 
no intention, as it proved, of yielding on the 
question of impressment, which was the principal 
American grievance. But even if England had 
surrendered every point it was an outrageous 
assumption on the part of General Dearborn to 
depart from the line of military instructions and 
military duty upon any representation foreign to 
that duty. By his error in this regard General 
Dearborn injured the American cause more than 
a severe defeat would have done, leaving as he 



The Land We Live In. 213 

did General Hull and his handful of men, who 
were not included in the armistice, to bear the 
brunt of British hostility. The government at 
Washington disapproved General Dearborn's 
course, and the armistice was cancelled, but not 
in time to prevent the loss of Detroit. 

General Hull had only eight hundred men in 
Detroit when General Brock attacked the place 
by land and water, with a much more numerous 
force of British and Indians, assisted by ships of 
war. It is often asserted that General Hull sur- 
rendered the place without serious defence. This 
is not true. In addition to the official statements 
of both sides, and General Hull's own vindica- 
tion, the journal of an Ohio soldier named Clay- 
pool who was in the American ranks at the time, 
shows that the Americans returned the British 
fire vigorously during August 15, and for several 
hours on the following day, when General Hull, 
in view of the overwhelming force opposed to 
him, capitulated. General Hull was afterward 
tried by court-martial and sentenced to death, 
but the sentence was not carried out, the United 
States escaping a stain like that which attaches 
to England for the fate of Admiral Byng. Hull 
had proven during the Revolution that he was no 
coward. Whatever may have been his errors of 
judgment before the surrender, at the time of 
the surrender Detroit was indefensible. 



The English were now masters of Michigan 
Territory, and the western forests were alive with 
Indians on the warpath. Fort Wayne was be- 
sieged, and Captain Zachary Taylor bravely 
defended Fort Harrison. General Harrison, ap- 
pointed to the command of the Northwestern 
army, promptly relieved both posts, and the 
government ordered that ten thousand men 
should be raised to recover Detroit and invade 



214 The Land We Live In. 

Canada. General James Winchester, in command 
of the advance corps of Harrison's forces, impru- 
dently engaged in conflict with a much more 
numerous body of British at Frenchtown, on the 
River Raisin. Nearly all his troops, numbering- 
about eight hundred, were killed or captured, 
and some of the captives were massacred. Gen- 
eral Winchester himself was taken prisoner. 
Soon afterward the British General Proctor issued 
a proclamation requiring the citizens of Michigan 
to take the oath of allegiance to the British 
crown, or leave the Territory. The American 
residents in Detroit, under the terms of the 
capitulation, remained undisturbed in their 
homes, but their hearts were continually wrung 
by the spectacle of cruelties practiced by Indian 
allies of the British upon American captives. 
Many families parted with all but necessary wear- 
ing apparel to redeem the sufferers, and private 
houses were turned into hospitals for their re- 
lief. Mr. Kinzie, of Chicago, who was now a 
paroled prisoner in Detroit, was foremost in this 
work of patriotism and humanity. 

The defeat at the River Raisin was a hard blow 
to General Harrison, especially as the troops to 
make up his army of ten thousand men were 
slow in arriving. He did not lose courage, how- 
ever, and when General Proctor sent an imperious 
demand for the surrender of Fort Meigs, Harrison 
answered: "He will never have this post surren- 
dered to him upon an}' terms. Should it fall 
into his hands, it will be in a manner calculated 
to do him more honor and to give him larger 
claims upon the gratitude of his government than 
any capitulation could possibly do." "There 
will be none of us left to kill" was the reply of 
Captain Crogan at Fort Stephenson, when Proc- 
tor's messenger menaced him with Indian ven- 
geance, should he fail to surrender. Harrison, rein- 
forced by General Clay Green, from Kentucky, 



The Land We Live Ln. 215 

compelled the besiegers to withdraw, and the 
heroic Crogan mowed down with one discharge 
of his single cannon more than fifty of the 
assailants who were advancing to carry his 
fort by storm. Hardly had the remainder fled 
when the Americans let down pails of water from 
the wall of the fort for the relief of their 
wounded enemies. The formation of an army 
for the invasion of Canada now went forward in 
earnest, while the retreat of the British shook the 
confidence of Tecumseh and his Indian followers 
in England's ability to protect them against the 
Americans. 

The Niagara frontier was the scene of desultory 
warfare, with varied fortune for both sides. The 
battle of Queenstown, October 13, 1812, although 
it resulted in the defeat and capture of the 
Americans engaged and witnessed a pitiable ex- 
hibition of cowardice on the part of militiamen 
who refused to cross the river to the aid of their 
countrymen, was attended by a loss for the Cana- 
dians that more than counterbalanced their vic- 
tory, in the death of Major-General Isaac Brock, 
whose well -deserved monument is a conspicuous 
feature of the Niagara landscape. Among the 
Americans who surrendered on this occasion was 
Colonel Winfield Scott, who, while himself a 
prisoner, took a resolute and memorable stand 
against the British claim that certain Irishmen 
captured in the American ranks should be sent to 
England to be tried for treason. The Irishmen, 
twenty-three in number, were put in irons and 
deported to England, but in the following May 
Colonel Scott, after the battle of Fort George, 
selected twenty-three British prisoners, not of 
Irish birth, to be dealt with as the British author- 
ities should deal with the Irish-Americans. The 
latter were finally released and returned to America, 
and the British doctrine of perpetual allegiance 
was shattered without treaty or diplomacy. 



2i6 The Land We Live In, 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

Battle of Lake Erie— Master-Commandant Oliver Hazard 
Perry — Building a Fleet — Perry on the Lake — A Duel of 
Long Guns — Fearful Slaughter on the Lawrence — "Can 

; Any of the Wounded Pull a Rope?"— At Close Quarters- 
Victory in Fifteen Minutes — "We Have Met the Enemv 
and They Are Ours "—The Father of Chicago Sees the 
End of the Battle— The British Evacuate Detroit— General 
Harrison's Victory at the Thames — Tecumseh Slain — The 
Struggle in the Southwest— Andrew Jackson in Com- 
mand — Battle of Horseshoe Bend — The Essex in the 
Pacific— Defeat and Victory on the Ocean— Captain Por- 

\ ter's Brave Defence — Burning of Newark — Massacre at 
Fort Niagara — Chippewa and Lundy's Lane — Devastation 
by the British Fleet— British Vandalism at Washington — 
Attempt on Baltimore—" The Star Spangled Banner." 

And now came the struggle for the control of 
Lake Erie — a struggle on which depended whether 
England should succeed in preventing the west- 
ern growth of the United States, or be driven 
forever from the soil which Americans claimed 
as their own. Master-Commandant Oliver Haz- 
ard Perry was but twenty-six years of age when 
the Navy Department called him from his pleas- 
ant home at Newport and sent him to command 
a navy summoned from the primeval forests of 
the Northwest. Young as he was Perry had seen 
service in the wars with France and Tripoli, and 
he had requested the Navy Department at the 
commencement of the conflict with England to 
send him where he could meet the enemies of 
his country. Perry arrived at Erie, then known 
as Presque Isle, in March, 1813. Sailing Master 
Daniel Dobbins and Noah Brown, a shipwright 
from New York, were busily at work on the new 
fleet. Two brigs, the Niagara and the Lawrence, 
were built with white and black oak and chestnut 
frames, the outside planking being of oak and 
the decks of pine. Two gunboats were newly 
planked up, and work on a schooner was just 
begun. The vessels had to be vigilantly guarded 



The Land We Live In. 217 

against attack by the British, who were fully- 
aware of the work being done. The capture of 
Fort George left the Niagara River open, and 
several American vessels which had been unable 
before to pass the Canadian batteries were now, 
with great exertion, drawn into the lake. These 
were the brig Caledonia, the schooners Somers, 
Tigress and Ohio, and the sloop Trippe. An English 
squadron set out to intercept the new arrivals, but 
Perry succeeded in gaining the harbor of Erie 
before the enemy made their appearance. 

The American ships were ready for sea on 
July 10, but officers and sailors were lacking, 
and it was not until about the close of the 
month that Perry had three hundred men to man 
his ten vessels. While the British squadron, 
under Captain Robert Heriot Barclay maintained 
a vigorous blockade, Perry found that his new 
brigs could not cross the bar without landing 
their guns and being blocked up on scows. 
Commander Barclay, thinking that Perry could 
not move, made a visit of ceremony with his 
squadron to Port Dover, on the Canadian side. 
During Barclay's absence Perry got the Lawrence 
and Niagara over the bar, and the British com- 
mander was astonished, when he returned on the 
morning of August 5, to see thS American fleet 
riding at anchor, and ready for battle. Barclay 
wished to delay the naval combat until after the 
completion at Maiden of a ten-gun ship called 
the Detroit, which was to be added to his force, 
and he therefore put into that harbor.* Perry 
improved the delay to exercise his crews, largely 
made up of soldiers, in seamanship. 

It was not until September 10 that the British 
squadron came out to give battle. Master-Com- 
mandant Perry had nine vessels mounting fifty- 



* Maiden, on the Detroit River, eighteen miles below the 
city of Detroit, is now known as Amherstburg. 



2i8 The Land We Live In. 

four guns, with 1536 pounds of metal. The British 
squadron consisted of six vessels, mounting sixty- 
three guns, with a total weight of 852 pounds. The 
American vessels were manned by 490 men and 
the British by 502 men and boys. In discipline, 
training and physical condition, however, the 
difference of crews was much more in favor of 
the British than the numbers indicate. The brig 
Lawrence was Perry's flagship; Barclay's pennant 
flew on the Detroit. As the American vessels 
stood out to sea Perry hoisted a large blue flag 
with the words of the dying Lawrence in white 
muslin — "Don't give up the ship!" He prepared 
for defeat as well as for victory, by gathering all 
his important papers in a package weighted and 
ready to be thrown overboard in the event of 
disaster. It may be said that Perry fought the 
earlier part of the battle almost alone, a slow- 
sailing brig, the Caledonia, being in line ahead 
of the Niagara, and Perry, having given orders 
that the vessels should preserve their stations. 
In the duel of long guns the British had a de- 
cided advantage and their fire being concentrated 
on the Lawrence that vessel soon became a wreck. 
Of one hundred and three men fit for duty on 
board the American flagship, eighty-three were 
killed or wounded. These figures sufficiently 
indicate the carnage ; but Perry fought on. ' ' Can 
any of the wounded pull a rope?" cried Perry, 
and mangled men crawled out to help in training 
the guns. For nearly three hours the Lawrence 
with the schooners Ariel and Scorpion, fought 
the British fleet. Then Master-Commandant 
Elliott, of the Niagara, fearing Perry had been 
killed, undertook, notwithstandirg Perry's pre- 
vious orders, to go out of line to the help of the 
Lawrence. Perry then changed his flag to the 
Niagara, leaving orders with First Lieutenant 
John J. Yarn all, of the Lawrence, to hold out to 
the last. Perry at once sent Master- Commandant 



The Land We Live In. 219 

Blliott in a boat to bring up the schooners, and 
meantime Lieutenant Yarnall, deciding that 
further resistance would mean the destruction of 
-all on board, lowered the flag on the Lawrence. 
The English thought they were already victors, 
and gave three cheers, but the Lawrence drifted 
out of range before they could take possession of 
her, and the Stars and Stripes were raised again 
over her blood-stained decks. 

The battle had in truth only begun, but was 
soon to end. The remainder of the American 
squadron closed in on the English vessels, raking 
them fore and aft. The English officers and men 
were swept from their decks by the hurricane of 
iron. It was the United States and the Mace- 
donian on a smaller scale. The American can- 
nonade at close quarters was so fast and furious 
that the British ships were soon in a condition 
that left no choice save between sinking or sur- 
render. In fifteen minutes after the Americans 
closed in a British officer waved a white hand- 
kerchief. The enemy had struck. Two of the 
English vessels, the Chippewa and the Little 
Belt, sought to escape to Maiden, but were pur- 
sued and captured by the sloop Trippe and the 
Scorpion.* Perry proceeded to the Lawrence, 
and on the decks of his flagship, still slippery 



*"At half past two. the wind springing up, Captain 
Elliott was enabled to bring his vessel, the Niagara, into 
close action. I immediately went on board of her, when 
lie anticipated my wish bv volunteering to bring the 
schooners, which had been kept astern by the lightness of 
the wind, into close action. At forty-five "minutes past two 
the signal was made for close action. The Niagara 
being very little injured I determined to pass through the 
enemy's line, bore up and passed ahead of their two ships 
and a brig, large schooner and sloop from the larboard side, 
at half pistol shot distance. The smaller vessels at this 
time having gotten within grape and canister distance, 
under the direction of Captain Elliott, and keeping up a 
well-di,rected fire, the two ships, a brig and a schooner, 
surrendered, a schooner and a sloop making a vain attempt 
to escape." — Perry's account of the battle. 



220 The Land We Live In. 

with blood, he received the surrender of the 
English officers. Perry wrote with a pencil on 
the back of an old letter his famous dispatch : 
"We have met the enemy, and they are ours — 
two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one 
sloop." The Americans lost in the battle 
twenty-seven killed and ninety-six wounded, of 
whom twenty-two were killed and sixty-one 
wounded on board the Lawrence. Twelve of the 
American quarter-deck officers were killed. The 
British lost forty-one killed and ninety-four 
wounded, making a total of one hundred and 
thirty-five. Commander Barcla}', one of Nelson's 
veterans, had lost an arm in a previous naval en- 
gagement. He gave his men an admirable 
example of courage, being twice wounded, once 
in the thigh and once in the shoulder, thus 
being deprived of the use of his remaining arm. 
Captain Finnis, of the Queen Charlotte, was 
mortally wounded, and died on the same evening. 

Thousands on the American and British shores 
witnessed or listened to the conflict, conscious 
that upon the result depended the future of the 
Northwest. None listened with more patriotic 
eagerness than John Kinzie, already mentioned 
as the first resident of Chicago, then a prisoner 
at Maiden, having been removed from Detroit on 
suspicion that he was in correspondence with 
General Harrison. Kinzie was taking a pro- 
menade under guard, when he heard the guns on 
Lake Erie. The time allotted to the prisoner for 
his daily walk expired, but neither he nor his 
guard observed the fact, so anxiously were they 
catching every sound from what they now felt 
sure was an engagement between ships of war. 
At length Mr. Kinzie was reminded that the 
hour for his return to confinement had arrived. 
He pleaded for another half hour. 

"Let me stay," said he, "till we can learn 
how the battle has gone. ' ' 



The Land We Live In. 221 

Very soon a sloop appeared under press of sail, 
rounding the point, and presently two vessels in 
chase of her. 

' ' She is running — she bears the British colors, ' ' 
cried Kinzie — "yes, yevS, they are lowering — they 
are striking her flag! Now" — turning to the 
soldiers, "I will go back to prison contented. I 
know how the battle has gone. ' ' 

The sloop was the Little Belt, the last of the 
British fleet to surrender, after a vain attempt to 
escape. The Father of Chicago had seen the end 
of the battle which made possible the Chicago of 
to-day.* 

Perry's victory compelled the enemy to evacuate 
Detroit, and all their posts in American ter- 
ritory except Michilimacinac, which place re- 
mained in the possession of the British until the 
close of the war. Soon after the battle of Lake 
Erie, General Harrison crossed to the Canadian 
shore, entered Maiden, and then passed on in pur- 
suit of Proctor and Tecumseh, who were in full 
retreat up the valley of the Thames. In the 
battle of the Thames, which followed, the British 
were completely routed, and Tecumseh was slain. 
The Northwest was now secure. The British 
had been driven back and their Indian ally, 
Tecumseh, with his great scheme of an independ- 
ent Indian power, had passed away. 



In the Southwest, however, the struggle be- 
tween whites and Indians continued to rage, the 
latter being led by a half-breed Creek named 
Weathersford. The massacre of more than four 
hundred men, women and children by the Creeks 
at Fort Mimms, in what is now Alabama, aroused 
the frontiers to fury, and Andrew Jackson, 



* John Kinzie was born at Quebec in 1763. After the war 
he went back^to Chicago, and died January 6, 1828, aged 65 
years. 



222 The Land We Live In. 

already known as "Old Hickory," the idol of 
his troops and the terror of the feeble War De- 
partment, took the field at the head of twenty- 
five hundred men. He showed himself a master 
of forest warfare, and in the bloody battle of 
Horseshoe Bend he broke the strength of the 
Creeks forever. Weathersford sought the tent of 
his conqueror, and asked for mercy for his 
people — not for himself. Jackson, who could 
respect in others the courage with w^hich he was 
so eminently endowed, granted generous terms 
to the vanquished, and Weathersford lived there- 
after in harmony with the whites. The autumn 
of 1813 witnessed the subjection of the hostile 
Indian tribes from the Lakes to the Gulf. 



The American navy continued to distinguish 
itself on the ocean as on the lakes, in heroic de- 
feat as well as in signal victory. While Captain 
David Porter, in the Essex, swept British com- 
merce and privateers from the Pacific, starting 
out with a frigate and starting home with a fleet, 
all taken by himself during a cruise unsurpassed 
for skill, daring and success, Master-Command- 
ant William Henry Allen, of the American brig 
Argus, lost his life and his vessel in battle with 
the British brig Pelican. The defeat of the 
Argus is believed to have been caused by the use 
of defective powder, which had been taken from 
on board a prize, and which did not give the 
cannon shot force enough to do serious damage 
to the enemy. Allen's death was due to his re- 
maining on deck to direct his men after he had 
been seriously wounded. He was one of the best 
ofiicers in the navy. The defeat and capture of 
the British brig-of-war Boxer, fourteen guns, 
after a sharp engagement, by the American 
schooner Enterprise, sixteen guns, in some degree 
compensated for the loss of the Argus. Captain 



The Land We Live In. 225 

Samuel Blythe, of the Boxer, nailed his colors to 
the mast and was killed at the first broadside. 
Lieutenant William Burrows, of the Enterprise, 
-was mortally wounded, but lived long enough to 
have the British commander's sword placed in 
Tiis hands. The splendid cruise of the Essex 
•ended most unfortunately at Valparaiso, where 
the frigate was attacked while in port by the 
British thirty-six-gun frigate Phoebe and eigh- 
teen-gun ship-sloop Cherub. The Essex was in 
a disabled condition. The British stood off 
beyond reach of the American's short guns, and 
kept up a terrific cannonade with their long 
guns, of which the two British vessels had thirty- 
eight and the Essex only six. Captain Porter 
lield out for about two hours under these unequal 
conditions, while his men were slaughtered and 
his vessel cut to pieces — he himself being fore- 
most in exposure and danger. At length he sur- 
rendered. ' ' Her colors, ' ' said the British com- 
mander, "were not struck until the loss in killed 
and wounded was so awfully great, and her 
shattered condition so seriously bad, as to render 
further resistance unavailing." 



Fresh bitterness was added to the struggle 
about the close of 1813 by the imprudent and 
inhuman action of General McClure, the Ameri- 
can commander at Fort George, in setting fire to 
the Canadian village of Newark in almost the 
depth of winter and turning out the inhabitants 
homeless wanderers in the snow. This outrage 
provoked but did not justify the massacre by the 
British of the helpless sick and unresisting at 
Fort Niagara, and the wasting of villages and 
settlements on the American side of the frontier. 
The invasion of Canada in 1814 by the Americans 
under General Jacob Brown proved little more 
".than a b<=rder raid, although the Americans won 



224 The Land We Live In. 

a well-fought battle at Chippewa and a costly 
victory at Lundy's Lane, on both of which occa- 
sions General Winfield Scott gained merited dis- 
tinction. The tide of war rolled back and forth 
a good deal like the old border strife between 
Scotland and England. Each side felt that it 
had wrongs to avenge, and wounds were inflicted 
by petty raids and skirmishes deeper and more 
rankling than those of a regular campaign. 
"While these were the conditions on the northern 
frontier, the shores of the Republic were harassed 
by the fleet of Admiral Cockburn from Delaware 
Bay to Florida. Villages were plundered, plan- 
tations devastated and slaves carried off under the 
false promise of freedom, to be sold in the West 
Indies. The people living on and near the coast 
were kept in ceaseless alarm by these marauders, 
who descended in unexpected places, and inflicted 
all the damage within their power. 

The overthrow of Napoleon in 1814, left the 
United States alone in hostility to Napoleon's 
triumphant foe, and the British government pre- 
pared to carry on the war vigorously. A power- 
ful fleet appeared in Chesapeake Bay, and 
landed an army of about five thousand men under 
the command of General Robert Ross. The 
authorities at Washington were entirely unpre- 
pared for the attack, and the British, after defeat- 
ing an American force, more like a mob than an 
army, at the battle of Bladensburg, marched into 
Washington. There, in a manner worthy of 
vandals, the public buildings, including the 
Capitol and the President's house, were given to 
the flames. While this act of barbarism was dis- 
approved by the English people, it is not to be 
forgotten that it was hailed with delight and 
laudation by the British Government, and that 
a monument to General Ross was erected in 
Westminster Abbey. The British followed up 
the firing of Washington by an effort to capture 



The Land We Live In. 22$, 

Baltimore. The brave defenders of Fort McHenry 
held out successfully against Cockburn's fleet, 
and General Ross lost his life while attempting 
to co-operate with the fleet. Francis S. Key, a 
resident of Georgetown, D. C. , was detained on 
board a British ship while Fort McHenry was 
being bombarded, and in the depth of his anxiety 
for his country's flag he wrote that famous song, 
"The Star Spangled Banner." Finding that 
their vandalism only served to inflame American 
patriotism instead of '"'chastising the Americans 
into submission," as Cockburn had been ordered 
to do, the invaders withdrew to their vessels. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

British Designs on the Southwest— New Orleans as a City of 
Refuge— The Baratarians— The Pirates Reject British Ad- 
vances—General Jackson Storms Pensacola— Captain 
Reid's Splendid Fight at Fayal— Edward I^ivingston Ad- 
vises Jackson — Cotton Bales for Redoubts — The British 
Invasion — Jackson Attacks the British at Villere's — The 
Opposing Armies— General Pakenham Attempts to Carry 
Jackson's L,ines by Storm — The British Charge — They Are 
Defeated with Frightful Slaughter— Pakenham Killed — 
lyast Naval Engagement — The President-Endymion 
Fight — Peace— England Deserts the Indians as She Had 
Deserted the Tories — Decatur Chastises the Algerians. 

An invasion of the Southwest by way of the 
Mississippi, and the seizure of New Orleans, were 
also included in the British plans. New Orleans 
at this time, although many good people were 
included among its inhabitants, attracted the 
refuse of the United States. The character of the 
place can be judged from an incident which 
occurred in Boston about the period of which I 
am writing. A merchant who had formed an 
establishment in Louisiana, happening to be 
in Boston, saw in a newspaper of that city a. 
vessel advertised to sail thence for New Orleans. 
He called upon the owner, and asked him to- 

15 



226 The Land We Live Ln. 

consign the ship to his house. The owner told 
the applicant in strict confidence that he had no 
intention of sending the vessel to New Orleans, 
but had advertised that alleged destination in the 
hope that among the persons applying for a 
passage he should find a rascal who had defrauded 
one of his friends out of a considerable sum of 
money, "New Orleans," he added, "being the 
natural rendezvous of rogues and scoundrels. ' ' 
Among persons answering the latter description 
were the pirates known as ' ' Baratarians, ' ' be- 
cause they lived on Barataria Bay, just west of 
the mouths of the Mississippi River. Thej- pre- 
tended to prey upon Spanish commerce only, but 
they made very little distinction and sold their 
plunder openly in the markets of New Orleans. 
The slave-trade was, however, their chief resource. 
They captured Spanish and other slaves on the 
high seas, and sold them to planters who were 
glad to buy for from ^150 to |2oo each, negroes 
worth three or four times that amount in the reg- 
ular market. Jean Lafitte was the chief of these 
marauders. A Frenchman by origin he felt some 
attachment, it appears, to the country which toler- 
ated him and his fellow-pirates, and when the 
commander of the British Gulf Squadron offered 
to pay the Baratarians to join him in an attack 
on New Orleans, Lafitte at once sent the dis- 
patches received from the British to Governor 
Claiborne, of Louisiana. The people of New 
Orleans, under the leadership of Edward Liv- 
ingston, the noted jurist, and former mayor 
of New York, organized a Committee of Safety, 
and prepared to assist in repelling the enemy. 
General Jackson, now major-general in the 
regular army, and in command of the Depart- 
ment of the South, repulsed the British from 
Mobile, and took Pensacola by storm, and thus 
freed from apprehension of an attack from Florida, 
lie proceeded to defend New Orleans. 



The Land We Live Ln. ziri 

Fortunately for the American cause Captain 
Samuel C. Reid, commander of the privateer 
General Armstong, being attacked in the neutral 
harbor of Fayal by the British commodore, Lloyd, 
and his squadron, resisted the onset with such 
extraordinary courage and energy as to severely 
cripple his assailants. Captain Reid was obliged 
to scuttle his ship to prevent her from falling 
into the hands of the British, but the latter lost 
one hundred and twenty killed and one hundred 
and thirty wounded in the unequal battle, and 
Lloyd's squadron was not able to join the ex- 
pedition at Jamaica until ten days after the 
date appointed for departure. The General 
Armstrong lost only two men killed and seven 
wounded in this memorable fight, which gave 
Jackson ample time to prepare the defence of 
New Orleans. 

To New Orleans had resorted many adherents 
of the old Bourbon monarchy, driven from France 
by the Revolution, and also at a more recent 
date some of the followers of Napoleon. Among 
the former was a French emigrant major named 
St. Geme, who had once been in the English 
service in Jamaica, and now commanded a com- 
pany in a battalion of citizens. This officer had 
been a favored companion of the distinguished 
French general, Moreau, when the latter, on a 
visit to Louisiana, a few years previously, had 
scanned with the critical eye of a tactician-, the 
position of New Orleans and its capabilities of 
defence. Edward Livingston, who acted as an 
aide-de-camp to General Jackson, advised the 
general to consult St. Geme, and the latter 
pointed out the Rodriguez Canal as the position 
which Moreau himself had fixed upon as the 
most defensible, especially for irregular troops. 
Jackson approved and acted upon the advice thus 
given, and hastened to cast up intrenchments 
along the line of the canal from the Mississippi 



228 The Land We Live In. 

back to an impassable swatnp two miles away. 
In building the redoubts the ground was found 
to be swampy and slimy, and the earth almost 
unavailable for any sort of fortification, where- 
upon a French engineer suggested the employ- 
ment of cotton bales. The requisite cotton was 
at once taken from a barque already laden for 
Havana. The owner of the cotton, Vincent 
Nolte, complained to Edward Livingston, who 
was his usual' legal adviser. "Well, Nolte," said 
Livingston, "since it is your cotton you will not 
mind the trouble of defending it. " ■^ Before the 
final battle a red hot ball set fire to the cotton, 
thereby endangering the gunpowder, and the 
cotton was removed, leaving only an earth em- 
bankment about five feet high, with a ditch in 
front to protect the Americans. 

The British troops, about 7000 in number, dis- 
embarked at Lake Borgne, after capturing an 
American flotilla which had been sent to prevent 
the landing. About nine miles from New Orleans, 
at Villere's Plantation, the invaders formed a 
camp, and they were suddenl}^ attacked by Jack- 
son on the evening of December 23. The 
battle raged fearfully in the darkness, Jackson's 
Tennesseans using knives and tomahawks with 
deadly effect. The Americans had the advantage, 
but in the fog and darkness Jackson could not 
follow up his success. Lieutenant-General Ed- 
ward Pakenham, one of the bravest and ablest of 
Wellington's veterans, landed on Christmas Day 
with reinforcements which made the British army 
about 8000 strong. Jackson had planted heavy 
guns along his line of defence, and had about 
4000 men to receive Pakenham. Among the most 
efficient of these were the 500 riflemen who fought 
with Jackson against the Creeks, and who were 



* A similar remark has been incorrectly attributed to 
Jackson. 



The Land We Live Ln. 229 

known as Coffee's brigade, from their com- 
mander's name. Trained in repeated encounters 
with the savages they knew little of military- 
organization, but were inaccessible to fear, per- 
fectly cool in danger, of great presence of mind 
and personal resource, and above all unerring 
marksmen. Among the New Orleans militia 
were several officers who had served under Napo- 
leon, and had met on the battlefields of Europe 
the British veterans they were now about to con- 
front in America. The Baratarians, too, should 
not be forgotten, and these, with the regular 
troops, the militia and the citizens, and many 
negroes, free and slave, composed about as mixed 
an array as ever fought a battle on American 
soil.* 

The British made an assault on the twent}^- 
eighth, and were repulsed with loss. On the 
night of December 31, they prepared for the 
closing struggle by erecting batteries upon which 
they mounted heavy ordnance within six hundred 
yards of the American breastworks. On the 
morning of January i, 1815, the British opened 
fire, Jackson replying with his heavy guns. The 
British batteries were demolished, an attempt to 
turn the American flank was repulsed by Coffee 
and his riflemen, and the day ended in gloom and 
disaster for the invaders. The American forces, 
strengthened by the arrival of one thousand 
Kentuckians, awaited the renewal of the attack. 
Pakenham determined to carry Jackson's lines by 
storm. At dawn on January 8, the British ad- 
vanced in solid column under a most destructive 

*More than half of Jackson's command was com- 
posed of negroes, who were principally employed with the 
spade, but several battalions of them were armed, and in 
the presence of the whole army received the thinks of 
General Jackson for their gallantry. On each anniversary 
the negro survivors of the battle always turned out in large 
numbers — so large, indeed, as to excite the suspicion that 
they were not all genuine.— yi/dfr^ D. Richardson. 



230 The Land We Live In. 

fire from the American batteries. On marched 
the men before whom the best troops of Napoleon 
had been unable to stand — on they marched as 
steadily as if on parade, the living closing in as 
the dead and wounded dropped out. Was it to 
be Badajos over again? 

The British were within two hundred yards of 
the American breastworks. Suddenly the Ten- 
nessee and Kentucky- sharpshooters, four ranks 
deep, rose from their concealment, and at the 
command — "Fire!" — a storm of bullets swept 
through the British lines. And it was not a 
single volley. As the Tennesseans fired they 
fell back and loaded, while the Kentuckians 
£red. And so the deadly blast of lead mowed 
down the British ranks while round and grape 
and chain-shot ploughed and shrieked through 
the now wavering battalions. General Paken- 
ham, at the head of his men, urged them forward 
with encouraging words, while he had one horse 
shot under him and his bridle arm disabled by a 
bullet. The British rallied and rushed forward 
again amid the tempest of death. Pakenham, 
mortally wounded, was caught in the arms of his 
aid, and his troops, no longer sustained by their 
leader's presence and example, fell back in dis- 
order. In this fearful charge the British lost 2600 
men, killed, wounded and made prisoners. The 
Americans lost only eight killed and thirteen 
wounded. On the night of January 19, the British 
retired to their fleet. 



The last naval engagement of the war took 
place in January, 1815, between the American 
frigate President, forty-four guns, commanded by 
Commodore Stephen Decatur, and the British 
frigate, Endymion, forty guns, Captain Hope. 
The battle began about three o'clock in the after- 
noon, and lasted until eleven o'clock at night, 



The Land We Live In. 231 

both commanders showing remarkable skill and 
resolution in the conflict, which was at long range. 
The Endymion was nearly dismantled and about 
to surrender when three other British men-of-war 
came up, and Decatur, being overpowered, had 
to strike his colors. The President had twenty- 
four men killed and fifty-six wounded, and the 
Endymion had eleven killed and fourteen 
wounded. 



A treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent 
between the American and British commissioners 
on Christmas Eve, 1814. England yielded nothing 
and received nothing. The issues which had 
provoked the war were ignored in its termina- 
tion — indeed it was unnecessary to deal with 
them. As Niles Res^ister stated the case in De- 
cember, 1814: "With the general pacification of 
Europe, the chief causes for which we went to 
war with Great Britain have, from the nature of 
things, ceased to affect us; it is not for us to 
quarrel for forms. Britain may pretend to any 
right she pleases, provided she does not exercise 
it to our injury. " The moral effect of the war 
was, however, favorable to the United States. 
American naval victories and the battle of New 
Orleans taught England that America was not an 
enemy to be despised on either sea or land. The 
War of 1812 has sometimes been called the second 
War of Independence, and its effect certainly was 
to establish for the United States a respectable 
position among independent powers. Even Eng- 
land's satellites in the confederacy against Napo- 
leon could not but admire the courage of the 
American people in bearding the British lion, 
and the chief magistrate of Ghent voiced the 
feeling of Europe when he offered the sentiment, 
at a dinner to the American Commissioners — 
"May they succeed in making an honorable 



232 The Land We Live Ln. 

peace to secure the liberty and independence of 
their country. ' ' 

England had to give up her demand for special 
terms for the Indians who had assisted her in the 
war. The scheme to create an Indian nation in 
the Northwest, with permanent boundaries, not 
to be trespassed by the United States, was aban- 
doned, although at first declared by the British 
Commissioners to be a sine qua non and the 
Indians had to accept terms dictated by the 
United States. The British had made lavish 
promises to the Indians when seeking them for 
allies, but the red men were deserted, as the 
loyalists of the Revolution had been deserted, at 
the close of hostilities. The Indians felt this 
keenly, especially as the Americans treated them 
as generously as if no hostilities had interrupted 
former relations. 



Peace with England gave the United States 
opportunity to chastise the Algerians, whose Dey, 
Hadgi Ali, a sanguinary tyrant, had been com- 
mitting outrages on American commerce ever 
since the beginning of the war with the British. 
Commodore Decatur was sent to the Mediter- 
ranean in May, 1815, with a squadron to chastise 
the Dey. He had no difficulty in encountering 
the Algerian corsairs, who supposed that the 
American navy no longer existed. Decatur, after 
a brief engagement, captured the Dey's flagship, 
and this was followed by the capture of another 
man-of-war belonging to the pirates. Decatur 
then sailed for Algiers with his squadron and 
prizes. The terrified despot appeared on the 
quarter-deck of Decatur's flagship, the Guerriere, 
gave up the captives in his hands, and signed a 
treaty dictated by the American commodore. 
Decatur then sailed to Tunis and Tripoli, and 
compelled the rulers of those States to make 



The Land We Live Ln. 233, 

restitution for having allowed the British to- 
capture American vessels in their harbors. la 
view of the services of the Danish consul, Mr. 
Nissen, when Captain Bainbridge was a prisoner 
in Tripoli, it is gratifying to know that Commo- 
dore Decatur, while in that port, secured the release 
of eight Danish seamen. History does not record 
whether Decatur, on this occasion, visited the 
lonely grave supposed to contain the mortal re- 
mains of Somers, the companion of his youth, 
and the hero of the gunpowder enterprise during 
the war with Tripoli. What emotions must have 
filled Decatur's mind as the old scenes brought 
back to him the memory of his own brave exploit 
— the destruction of the Philadelphia — and of the 
unhappy fate of his bosom friend ! 



South America Free. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

England and Spanish America— A Significant Declaration— 
The Key to England's Policy in South America— Alex- 
ander Hamilton and the South Americans — President 
Adams' Grandson a Filibuster — Origin of the Revolutions 
in South America— Colonial Zeal for Spain— Colonists 
Driven to Fight for Independence — A War of Extermina- 
tion—Patriot Ivcaders— The British Assist the Revolution- 
ists—American Caution and Reserve— The Monroe Doc- 
trine—Why England Championed the Spanish-American 
Republics— A Free Field Desired for British Trade — The 
Holy Alliance — Secretary Canning and President Monroe 
— The Monroe Declaration Not British, But American. 

The same motives which had prompted Eng- 
land to impose oppressive restrictions upon 
Aaierican trade, thereby driving the colonies to 
sti' "ke for independence, prompted her to assist 
Sc? th America in throwing off the yoke of Spain. 
Ers. eland did not expect to conquer Spain's- 
An'erican colonies for herself, but she desired tO' 



254 The Land We Lii'e In. 

liberate them in order to annex them commer- 
cially. Hardiv had King George recognized the 
independence of the United States when his 
ministers were scheming to effect the independ- 
ence of South America, As early as June 26, 
1797, Thomas Picton, governor of the British 
island of Trinidad, in the West Indies, issued an 
address to certain revolutionists in Venezuela in 
which, speaking by authority of the British 
Minister of Foreign Affairs, he said: 

"The object which at present I desire most 
particularly to recommend to your attention, is 
the means which might be best adapted to 
liberate the people of the continent near to the 
Island of Trinidad, from the oppressive and 
tyrannic system which supports, with so much 
rigor, the monopoly of commerce, under the title 
of exclusive registers, which their government 
licenses demand; also to draw the greatest advan- 
tages possible, and which the local situation of 
the island presents, by opening a direct and free 
communication with the other parts of the world, 
without prejudice to the commerce of the British 
nation. In order to fulnll this intention with 
greater facility, it will be prudent for your Ex- 
cellency to animate the inhabitants of Trinidad 
in keeping up the communication which they 
had with those of Terra Firma, previous to the 
reduction of that island; under the assurance, 
that they will find there an entrepot, or general 
magazine, of every sort of goods whatever. To 
this end, his Britannic Majesty has determined, 
in council, to grant freedom to the ports of 
Trinidad, with a direct trade to Great Britain. 

"With regard to the hopes you entertain of 
raising the spirits of those persons, with whom 
vou are in correspondence, toward encouraging 
the inhabitants to resist the oppressive authority 
of their government, I have little more to say, 
than that thev mav "be certain that, whenever 



The Land We Live In. 235 

they are in that disposition, they may receive, 
at your hands, all tht? succors to be expected 
from his Britannic Majesty, be it with forces, or 
with arms and ammunition to any extent ; with 
the assurancf, that the views of his Britannic 
Majesty go no further than to secure to them 
their indepr-nd^nce, without pretending to any 
sovereignty over their country, nor even to inter- 
fere in the privileges of the people, nor in their 
political, civil or religious rights." 

This declaration is the key to Great Britain's 
policy in Spanish America during the century 
since it was issued. The conspiracy which 
evoked Governor Picton's plain statement of 
England's attitude toward the South American 
colonies, was discovered by the Spanish author- 
ities, and J. M. Espana, one of its leaders, was 
executed.* William Pitt continued to scheme 
for Spanish-American independence, and suc- 
ceeded in enlisting the sympathy of Alexander 
Hamilton and Rufus King, American Minister at 
London. President John Adams, however, would 
have nothing to do with the movement, which 
he regarded as a plot to drive the United States 
into a British alliance against the French, and 
possibly this may have been in the mind 
of Pitt. The American people were not as cold 
as the President, however, on the subject of 
South America, and Francisco Miranda, a volun- 
tary exile from Venezuela on account of his 
republican principles, succeeded in organizing a 

* Espana was hanged and quartered. A writer in the 
New York Sun, commenting on Kspana's death, said that 
" thus in the eisfhteenth century Spain repeated the bar- 
barism perpetrated by England on William Wallace in 
1305." It is unnecessary to go back to William Wallace or 
off the American continent for an act of barbarity similar 
to E^pana's execution. In the same decade, one McLean, a 
former resident, if not a citizen of the United States, was 
hanged and quartered in Canada, by the sentence of a 
British court, on a trumped up charge of having been, 
engaged in a treasonable conspiracy. 



236 The Lattd We Live In. 

filibustering force in New York, one of the 
members of which was a grandson of the Presi- 
dent himself. The expedition was defeated and 
nearly all engaged in it were captured by the 
Spaniards, among them young William S. Smith, 
John Adams' grandson. Yrujo, the Spanish 
Minister at Washington, offered to interpose in be- 
lialf of a pardon for the young man, but Presi- 
dent Adams declined to use his exalted ofi5ce to 
•obtain any respite for the youth who had so un- 
fortunately proved his inheritance of the old 
Adams' devotion to liberty, "My blood should 
flow upon a Spanish scaffold," wrote America's 
chief magistrate, "before I would meanly ask or 
accept a distinction in favor of my grandson. ' ' 
The young man's life was spared, however, and 
he returned to the United States. 

Francisco Miranda, who had made his escape to 
Barbadoes, raised a force of four hundred men, 
with the assistance of the British, landed in 
Venezuela, and proclaimed a provisional govern- 
ment. This expedition was also unsuccessful, 
and Miranda retired under the protection of a 
British man-of-war. At this time there was no 
general feeling in South America in favor of in- 
dependence. Although some scattering sparks 
from the sacred altar of liberty had found 
their way into Spanish America; notwithstand- 
ing the severity of the colonial system, and the 
corruptions and abuses of power which every- 
where prevailed ; such was the habitual loyalty 
of the Creoles of America ; such the degradation 
and insignificance of the other races ; so in- 
veterate were the prejudices of all, and so power- 
ful was the influence of a state religion, main- 
tained by an established hierarchy, that it is 
probable the colonies would have continued, for 
successive ages, to be governed by a nation six 
thousand miles distant, who had no interest in 
common with them, and whose oppressions, they 



The Land We Live In. 237 

had borne for three centuries, had not that nation 
been shaken at home, by an extraordinary revo- 
lution, and its government overturned.* 



Among other good results which the ambition 
of Napoleon Bonaparte produced without inten- 
tion on his part, was the uprising against Spanish 
oppression in South America. When Napoleon 
compelled Ferdinand to abdicate the crown of 
Spain in favor of Joseph Bonaparte, the loyalty 
and spirit of the Spaniards were aroused, and the 
people refused to submit to a monarch imposed on 
them by treachery and supported by foreign 
bayonets. In the provinces not occupied by the 
French, juntas were established which assumed 
the government of their districts; and that at 
Seville, styling itself the supreme junta of Spain 
and the Indies, despatched deputies to the differ- 
ent governments in America, requiring an ac- 
knowledgment of its authority ; to obtain which, 
it was represented that the junta was acknowl- 
edged and obeyed throughout Spain. At the 
same time the regency created at Madrid by 
Ferdinand when he left his capital, and the 
junta at Asturias, each claimed superiority, and 
endeavored to direct the affairs of the nation. 

Napoleon, on his part, was not less attentive to 
America ; agents were sent in the name of Joseph, 
king of Spain, to communicate to the colonies 
the abdication of Ferdinand, and Joseph's ac- 
cession to the throne, and to procure the recogni- 
tion of his authority by the Americans. Thus, 
the obedience of the colonies was demanded by 
no less than four tribunals,' each claiming to- 
possess supreme authority at home. There could 
scarcely have occurred a conjuncture more favor- 
able for the colonists to throw off their dependence 



*See Huutington's "View of South America and Mexico. 



238 The Land We Live In. 

on Spain, being convulsed, as she was, by a 
civil war, the king a prisoner, the monarchy 
-subverted and the people unable to agree among 
themselves where the supreme authority was 
vested, or which of the pretenders was to be 
obeyed. The power of the parent state over its 
colonies was de facto at an end; in consequence 
of which they were, in a measure, required to 
"provide new guards for their security. " But so 
totally unprepared were the colonists for a 
political revolution that instead of these events 
being regarded as auspicious to their welfare, they 
only served to prove the strength of their loyalty 
and attachment to Spain. Kotwithstanding that 
the viceroys and captain-generals, excepting the 
viceroy of New Spain, manifcbted a readiness to 
acquiesce in the cessions of Bayonne, to yield to 
the new order of things, and to sacrifice their 
king, provided they could retain their places, in 
which they were confirmed by the new king, the 
news of the occurrences in Spain filled the 
people with indignation ; they publicly burnt the 
proclamations sent out by King Joseph, expelled 
his agents, and such was their rage that all 
Frenchmen in the colonies became objects of in- 
sult and execration. In their zeal, not for their 
own but for Spanish independence, the colonists, 
up to the year 1810, supplied not less than ninety 
millions of dollars to Spain to assist in carrying 
on the war against France. 



At length, about the year 1809, the people of 
the several provinces began to form juntas of 
their own, not with the object of throwing off the 
Spanish yoke, but the better to protect them- 
selves, should the French succeed in establishing 
their power in the peninsula. The Spanish vice- 
roys, alarmed for their own authority, met the 
movement with unsparing hostility. In the city 



The Land We Live In. 239 

of Quito the popular junta was suppressed by an 
armed force, and hundreds of persons were mas- 
sacred and the city plundered by the Spanish 
troops. Notwithstanding these cruelties the 
people remained faithful to the crown of Spain, 
and the junta of Caracas, having deposed the 
colonial officers, and organized anew administra- 
tion, still acted in the name of Ferdinand the 
Seventh, and offered to aid in the prosecution of 
the war against France. The impotent Council of 
Regency, which pretended to represent the an- 
cient government in Spain, treated the position 
taken by the colonists as a declaration of inde- 
pendence, and sent troops to dragoon the Ameri- 
cans into submission. Thus the Spanish-Ameri- 
cans were compelled to assume an independence 
of the mother country which they had neither 
sought nor desired, and on Julys, 1811, Venezuela 
took the lead in formally casting off allegiance 
to Spain. 

The war which followed was of the most 
sanguinary character. The patriots of South 
America were denounced as rebels and traitors, 
and the vengeance of the State, and the anathemas 
of the Church, directed against them. That a 
contest commenced under such auspices should 
have become a war of extermination, and in its 
progress have exhibited horrid scenes of cruelty, 
desolation, and deliberate bloodshed ; that all 
offers of accommodation were repelled with insult 
and outrage; capitulations violated, public faith 
disregarded, prisoners of war cruelly massacred, 
and the inhabitants persecuted, imprisoned, and 
put to death, cannot occasion surprise, however 
much it may excite indignation. As violence 
and cruelty always tend to provoke recrimina- 
tion and revenge, the outrages of the Spaniards 
exasperated the Americans, and led to retaliation, 
which rendered the contest a war of death, as it 
was often called, characterized by a ferocious 



240 The Land We Live In. 

and savage spirit, scarcely surpassed by that of 
Cortes and Pizarro. The violent measures of the 
Spanish rulers, and the furious and cruel conduct 
of their agents in America, toward the patriots, 
produced an effect directly contrary to what 
was expected ; but which nevertheless might have 
been foreseen, had the Spaniards taken counsel 
from experience instead of from their mortified 
pride and exasperated feelings. Arbitrary meas- 
ures, enforced with vigor and cruelty, instead of 
extinguishing the spirit of independence, only 
served to enliven its latent sparks and blow them 
into flame. Miranda died in chains, and Hidalgo, 
the patriot priest of Mexico, was put to death by 
his cruel captors, but Bolivar and Paez, Sucre and 
San Martin, led the patriot armies to ultimate 
victory, and established the independence of 
Spanish America. Only one great revolutionary 
leader, Iturbide, failed to follow the example of 
Washington. Iturbide attempted to found an 
imperial dynasty in Mexico, and lost his life and 
his crown. Bolivar, on the other hand, with a 
foresight worthy of Washington himself, sought 
to form a general confederation of all the States 
of what was formerly Spanish America, with the 
object of uniting the resources and means of the 
several States for their general defence and 
security. This great project was accepted by 
Chile, Peru and Mexico, and treaties concluded in 
accordance therewith. 



Throughout the South American struggle for 
independence Great Britain gave assistance to 
the patriots almost as freely and openly as if she 
bad been at war with Spain. Veteran officers 
who had served in the British armies against 
Napoleon, joined the South American forces, 
and an Irish Legion of one thousand men, raised 
t)y General D'Evereux, sailed from Dublin for 



The Land We Live In. 241 

Colombia, A banquet was given to General 
D'Evereux, before his departure, at which two 
thousand guests were present, and the celebrated 
orator, Charles Philips, delivered a most eloquent 
address. Lord Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald, 
commanding the Chilian fleet, drove the Span- 
iards from the Pacific. American as well as 
English officers and seamen served under 
Cochrane's flag, and took part in his exploits, of 
which the most brilliant was the cutting out of 
a Spanish frigate from under the guns of Cal- 
lao. Under the protection of the batteries of the 
castle of Callao lay three Spanish armed vessels, 
a forty-gun frigate and two sloops-of-war, guarded 
by fourteen gunboats. On the night of the fifth 
of November, 1820, Lord Cochrane, with 240 
volunteers in fourteen boats, entered the inner 
harbor, and succeeded in cutting out the Spanish 
frigate with the loss of only forty-one men killed 
and wounded. The Spanish loss was 120 men. 
This success annihilated the Spanish naval power 
in those waters. 



When a commissioner from the patriots of New 
Grenada applied at Washington in 181 2, for 
assistance. President Madison answered that 
"though the United States were not in alliance, 
they were at peace with Spain, and could not 
therefore assist the independents; still, as in- 
habitants of the same continent, they wished well 
to their exertions. ' ' Notwithstanding the policy 
of the government, founded on the dictates of 
prudence and caution, the people of the United 
States almost universally felt a deep and lively 
interest in the success of their brethren in South 
America, engaged in the same desperate struggle 
for liberty which they themselves had gone 
through. Near the close of the year 18 17, the 
President of the United States appointed three 
16 



242 The Land We Live In. 

commissioners, Messrs. Rodne}-, Bland, and 
Graham, to visit the revolted colonies in South 
America and to ascertain their political condi- 
tion, and their means and prospects of securing 
their independence; and early in 1818, the legis- 
lators of Kentucky adopted resolutions, express- 
ing their sense of the propriety and expediency 
of the national government acknowledging the 
independence of the South American republics. 
These resolutions probably emanated from the 
influence of Henry Clay, from the first a zealous 
and steadfast friend of the South American pa- 
triots. Some Americans joined the patriot forces, 
and supplies of ammunition and muskets were 
furnished to them from this country. President 
Monroe was able to state to Congress, in 1819, 
that the greatest care had been taken to enforce 
the laws intended to preserve an impartial 
neutralit}'. Briefly summed up, the attitude of 
the American government throughout the South 
American struggle was one of distance, caution 
and reserve, while England boldly ignored inter- 
national laws, and fought her way through her 
filibusters to the hearts and the commerce of the 
Spanish-Americans. 



It is needless to go into extended discussion as 
to the authorship of the Monroe Doctrine. Intel- 
ligent self-interest inspired the United States and 
England to support the independence of South 
America. England's motive was chiefly commer- 
cial and partly political. She wanted Spanish 
America to be independent because the continent 
would thus be thrown open to British com- 
merce, and because, not looking forward herself 
to territorial aggrandizement in that direction, 
she wished other powers to keep their hands 
off. The British government had no desire, in 
taking this position, to promote the growth and 



The Land We Live In. 243 

extension of republican institutions. The ruling 
class in Great Britain would doubtless have pre- 
ferred to see every Spanish-American State a 
monarchy, provided that under monarchy it 
could be equally useful to the British empire and 
independent of every other European power. If 
England, in championing the Spanish-American 
republics seemed to champion republican institu- 
tions, it was because republican institutions gave 
the strongest assurance of political separation 
from Europe, and of a free field for Great 
Britain.* 

On the part of the United States the Monroe 
Doctrine was the formal and authoritative expres- 
sion of a sentiment which had animated Ameri- 
can breasts from the origin of the Republic. 
The Monroe Doctrine is based on patriotism and 
self-preservation, and the crisis which called it 
forth was of the gravest consequence to the 
American people. The Spanish empire in 
America had never been a menace to the United 
States. It was too decrepit to be dangerous. 
Conditions would have been very different with 
France, for instance, or Prussia, established as a 



* "The Spanish-American question is essentially settled. 
There will be no Congress upon it, and things will take 
their own course on that continent which cannot be other- 
wise than favorable to us. I have tio objection to monarchy 
in Mexico ; quite otherwise. Mr. Harvey's instructions au- 
thorize him to countenance and encourage any reasonable 
project for establishing it (project on the part of the 
Mexicans I mean), even in the person of a Spanish Infanta. 
But. as to putting it forward as a project, or proposition of 
ours, that is out of the question. Monarchy in Mexico, and 
monarchy in Brazil, would cure the evils of universal 
democracy, and prevent the drawing of the line of demarka- 
tion. which I most dread. America versus Europe. The 
United States naturally enough aim at this division, and 
cherish the democracy which leads to it. But I do not much 
apprehend their influence, even if I believed it. I do not 
altogether see any of the evidence of their activity in 
America. Mexico and they are too neighborly to be 
friends." — Canning, to the British Minister at Madrid, De- 
cember 31, 1823. 



244 I'he Land We Live Ln. 

great South American power. There was the 
strongest reason for believing that the govern- 
ments of continental Europe combined in the 
"Holy Alliance" seriously intended to dispose 
the destinies of South America, as they had 
divided the continent of Europe. The primary 
object of the allied powers — the proscription of 
all political reforms originating from the people 
— could leave no doubt of the concern and hos- 
tility with which they viewed the development 
of events in Spanish America, and the probable 
establishment of several independent, free States, 
resting on institutions emanating from the will 
and the valor of the people. But there is more 
specific evidence of their hostile intentions — Don 
Jose Vaventine Gomez, envoy from the govern- 
ment of Buenos Ayres at Paris, in a note to the 
secretary of his government of the twentieth of 
April, 1819, said that "the diminution of repub- 
lican governments was a basis of the plans 
adopted by the holy alliance for the preservation 
of their thrones; and that in consequence, the 
republics of Holland, Venice, and Genoa, re- 
ceived their deathblow at Vienna, at the very 
time that the world was amused by the solemn 
declaration that all the States of Europe would be 
restored to the same situation they were in before 
the French revolution. The sovereigns assembled 
at Aix la Chapelle, have agreed, secretly, to draw 
the Americans to join them in this policy, when 
Spain should be undeceived, and have renounced 
the project of re-conquering her provinces ; and 
the king of Portugal warmly promoted this plan 
through his ministers." France also sought by 
intrigue to secure the acceptance by the United 
Provinces and Chile of a monarchical government 
under French protection. 

For the reasons before stated these designs 
naturally alarmed Canning, England's distin- 
guished Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he 



The La?id We Live In. 245 

proposed to Mr. Rush, the American Minister at 
London, that Great Britain and the United States 
should join in a protest against European inter- 
ference with the independent States of Spanish 
America. This was in September 1823, and in a 
message of December 2, following, President 
Monroe uttered his famous declaration to the 
effect that "the United States would consider any 
attempt on the part of the European powers to 
extend their system to any portion of this hemi- 
sphere as dangerous to our peace and safety."^ 
Mr. Monroe's motive in issuing this declaration 
was wholly American and patriotic, England's 
designs were inevitably aided by the action of 
the American President, and the English Govern- 
ment approved and their press applauded 
America's resolute course, but it was not to win 
English applause, but to defend the integrity of 
the United States that the Monroe Doctrine was 
proclaimed to the world. The opposition of Great 
Britain and the attitude of the United States 
proved more than the Holy Alliance cared to 
confront, and the nations of Spanish America 
were allowed to enjoy without further molesta- 
tion the independence which they had gained by 
years of heroic effort and sacrifice. 

* " They (the United States) have aided us materially. 
The Congress (Verona) was broken in all its limbs before, 
but the President's (Monroe's) speech gives it the coup de 
grace. While I was hesitating in September what shape to 
give the protest and declaration I sounded Mr. Rush, the 
American Minister here, as to his powers and disposition 
to join in any step which we might take to prevent a 
hostile enterprise on the part of the European powers 
against Spanish America. He had not powers, but he 
would have taken upon himself to join with us if we 
would have begun by recognizing the Spanish-American 
States. This we could not do, and so we went on alone. 
But I have no doubt that his report to his government of 
this sounding, which he probably represented as an over- 
ture, had a great share in producing the explicit declara- 
tions of the President."— Cawwzw^ to the British Minister at, 
Madrid. 



246 The Land We Live In. 

Progress. 
CHAPTER XXIX. 

The United States Taking the Lead in Civilization— Man- 
hood Suffrage and Freedom of Worship — Humane 
Criminal Laws— Progress the Genius of the Nation— A 
Patriotic Report — ,-itate Builders iu the Northwest — Illi- 
nois and the Union— Immigration— British Jealousy— An 
Kuglish Farmer's Opinion of America — Commerce and 
Manufactures — England Tries to Prevent Skilled Artisans 
from Emigrating— The Beginning of Protection— The 
British Turn on Their Friends the Algerians — General 
Jackson Invades Florida— Spain Sells Florida to the 
United States. 

While holding their own against foreign 
enemies on land and sea the United States were 
assuming the lead in the march of civilization. 
Manhood suffrage was gradually taking the place 
of property suffrage, liberty of worship was re- 
cognized in practice as well as theory, and the 
criminal laws showed a growing spirit of human- 
ity. Capital crimes were few, as compared with 
Great Britain. "The severity of our criminal 
laws, " wrote William Bradford, the distinguished 
jurist, and for some time Attorney-General of the 
United States, "is an exotic plant, and not the 
growth of Pennsylvania." And Pennsylvania, 
when left to her own influences and tendencies 
by the success of the Revolution, was not slow to 
adopt humane and gratifying reforms, uttering 
far in advance of some other commonwealths the 
declaration that "to deter more effectually from 
the commission of crimes by continued visible 
punishment of long duration, and to make 
sanguinary punishments less necessary, houses 
ought to be provided for punishing by hard 
labor those who shall be convicted of crimes not 
capital." In September, 1786, the laws of that 
State were amended so as to substitute imprison- 



The Land We Live in, 247 

inent at hard labor for capital punishment for 
robber>', burglary, and one other crime, and it 
was provided that no attainder should work cor- 
ruption of blood in any case, and that the estates 
of persons committing suicide should descend to 
their natural heirs. It was likewise enacted that 
"every person convicted of bigamy, or of being 
accessory after the fact in any felony, or of re- 
ceiving stolen goods, knowing them to have been 
stolen, or of any other offence not capital, for 
which, by the laws now in force, burning in the 
hand, cutting off the ears, nailing the ear or ears 
to the pillory, placing in and upon the pillory, 
whipping, or imprisonment for life, is, or may 
be inflicted, shall, instead of such parts of the 
punishment, be fined and sentenced to hard labor 
for any term not exceeding two years. " Also, 
as if dreading that lax laws might lead to a 
carnival of crime, the legislators restricted the 
operation of the new and lenient statute to three 
years. The act was renewed, however, at the 
close of that term, and finally, in 1794, the re- 
form of the criminal code was crowned with the 
declaration that "no crime whatever, excepting 
murder of the first degree, shall hereafter be 
punished with death." 

Other States either kept pace with or followed 
the example of Pennsylvania in making their 
criminal laws more reformatory and less vindic- 
tive, and while England affected to despise 
American civilization, America was leading Eng- 
land in fhe march of humanity. 

The genius of the nation was progress — not the 
spirit of the huckster, anxious for present gain, 
but the enlarged view of the patriot, anxious for 
the future weal of his country and his race. A 
striking expression of this spirit is shown in the 
report made in 1812 by Gouverneur Morris, De 
Witt Clinton and other eminent men on the 
jjracticability and prospects of the proposed Erie 



248 The Land We Live In. 

Canal. After boldly stating that the tolls from 
this work would amply repay the outlay required 
for its construction, the report adds: "It is im- 
possible to ascertain and it is difficult to imagine 
how much toll would be collected ; but like our 
advance in numbers and wealth, calculation out- 
runs fancy. Things which twenty years ago any 
man would have been laughed at for believing, 
we now see. * * * The life of an individual is 
short. The time is not distant when those who 
make this report will have passed away. But no 
time is fixed to the existence of a State ; and the 
first wish of a patriot's heart is that his may be 
immortal." In the Northwest also, the State- 
builders of that day were equally farsighted m 
patriotic provision for the future. When it was 
proposed to admit Illinois as a State, Nathaniel 
Pope, delegate in Congress from that territory, 
urged that the northern boundary should be ex- 
tended to take in the port of Chicago, and a con- 
siderable coast-line on Lake Michigan, so as to 
give the State an interest in the lakes and bind 
it to the North as its southern frontiers bound it 
to the South and Southwest, thus checking any 
tendency to sectional disunion. Judge Pope 
pointed out that associations would thus be 
formed both with the North and South, and that 
a State thus situated, having a decided interest 
in the commerce, and in the preservation of the 
whole confederacy, could never consent to dis- 
union. These views were happily successful m 
obtaining the approbation of Congress, and Illi- 
nois was saved from the limits which would have 
made it only a southern border State. In the 
Southwest, as well as in the North pioneers 
pushed rapidly into the wilderness, crossing the 
Mississippi and founding new States in which the 
long struggle between freedom and slavery was to 
begin. 



The Land We Live In. 249 

When what may be called the blockade of 
Europe was raised by the final defeat of Napo- 
leon, immigrants began to pour into the United 
States in large numbers. Many of them, like 
many immigrants to-day, became stranded in the 
cities of the coast, without resources and without 
employment, willing to work, but unable to get 
work. In February, 1817, James Buchanan, the 
British consul at New York, issued a warning 
against immigration to the United States, on the 
ground, as he alleged, of numerous applications 
made to his ofiice for aid to return to Great 
Britain and Ireland, but at the same time the 
consul stated that he was authorized to place all 
desirable immigrants, who found themselves 
destitute in New York, in Upper Canada or Nova 
Scotia. Mr. Buchanan was evidently not so 
anxious to assist his fellow-subjects of King 
George as he was to promote the British policy 
of building up the Canadian territories as a 
counterpoise to the United States. While there 
was undoubtedly some distress among immigrants 
of the improvident class, those who came here 
with the determination to work generally found 
work before long at much better compensation 
than they could have earned in England, while 
those who proceeded to the new regions of the 
West had no difficulty in becoming independent 
and prosperous freeholders. 

"In exchanging the condition of an English 
farmer for that of an American proprietor, ' ' 
wrote an intelligent immigrant, "I expect to 
suffer many inconveniences ; but I am willing to 
make a great sacrifice of present ease, were it 
merely for the sake of obtaining in the decline 
of life, an exemption from that wearisome solici- 
tude about pecuniary affairs from which even the 
affluent find no refuge in England; and, for my chil- 
dren, a career of enterprise and wholesome family 
connections in a society whose institutions are 



250 TTie Land We Live In. 

favorable to virtue; and at last the consola- 
tion of leaving them efficient members of a 
flourishing, public-spirited, energetic communi'ty ; 
where the insolence of wealth and the servility 
of pauperism, between which in England there is 
scarcely an interval remaining, are alike un- 
known. * * * It has struck me as we have 
passed along from one poor hut to another, among 
the rude inhabitants of this infant State, that 
travelers in general who judge by comparison, 
are not qualified to form a fair estimate of these 
lonely settlers. Let a stranger make his tour 
through England in a course remote from the 
great roads, and going to no inns, take such 
entertainment only as he might find in the 
cottage of laborers, he would have as much cause 
to complain of the rudeness of the people, and 
more of their drunkenness and profligacy than in 
these backwoods : although in England the poor 
are a part of society whose institutions are matured 
by the experience of two thousand years. But in 
their manners and morals, but especially in their 
knowledge and proud independence of mind, 
they exhibit a contrast so striking that he must 
be a petit nialtre traveler, or ill-informed of the 
character and circumstances of his poor country- 
men, or deficient in good and manly sentiment, 
who would not rejoice to transplant into these 
boundless regions of freedom the millions he has 
left behind him groveling in ignorance and 
want. " * 

While a great agricultural domain was being 
occupied in the West, commerce and manufac- 
tures were not neglected. American merchant- 
men visited every sea, no longer in dread of 
hostile Briton or Barbary pirate, and internal 
commerce received a mighty impulse from the 



* Notes on a journey in America from the coast of Vir- 
ginia to the territory of Illinois, by M. Birkbeck. 



The Land We Live In. 251 

steamboat. Meanwhile the foundations were laid 
of those vast manufacturing interests which were 
yet to overshadow commerce in the East. As 
early as 1810, the domestic manufactures of all 
descriptions were worth $127,694,602 annually, 
and it was estimated by competent authorities 
that of $36, 793, 249 — the value of the manufactures 
of wool, cotton and flax, with their mixtures — 
fully two-thirds were produced in the houses of 
the farmers and other inhabitants. England had 
foreseen that America might prove a powerful 
rival in the manufacturing field, and Parliament 
enacted laws to prevent the emigration of skilled 
artisans. It may seem almost incredible that 
less than one hundred years ago such a prohibi- 
tion existed, but I read in an account of a voyage 
from London to Boston in 18 17 that "the passen- 
gers were summoned to appear at the Gravesend 
custom house, personally to deliver in their 
names and a statement of their professions. 
Had any been known to be artisans or manu- 
facturers, they would have been stopped and 
forbidden to leave the kingdom. An act of 
Parliament imposes a heavy fine on those who 
induce them to attempt it. ' ' Samuel Slater, who 
brought the Arkwright patents in his brain, 
evaded the prohibition a few years after the Re- 
volution, and his descendants are to-day among 
the wealthiest and most reputable of New Eng- 
land's citizens. 

The war of 1812-15, gave a tremendous impulse to 
American manufactures through the exclusion of 
British and other foreign products. At the close of 
the war, however, when American ports were thrown 
open to the trade of Great Britain, the manufactu- 
rers of that country, with the deliberate pur- 
pose of crushing American industries out of ex- 
istence, threw vast quantities of goods into the 
American markets, completely swamping native 
productions, and making it impossible for native 



252 The Land We Live In. 

manufacturers to compete with the importations. 
It was this ruinous relapse from comparative pros- 
perity that prompted the agitation for a protective 
tariff. As further evidence of British purpose to 
do all the damage possible to American interests, 
even in time of peace, it may be mentioned that 
when Lord Exmouth, with a powerful fleet, 
visited Algiers in 1816, and negotiated a treaty 
between the Dey — Omar, the successor of 
Hadgi Ali — and the kings of Sardinia and 
Naples, the Algerians began to show themselves 
again hostile to the United States within a few 
days after the treaty. The public sentiment of 
Europe, however, made it impossible for England 
to make longer use of those pirates to injure 
commercial rivals, and the British Government, 
in deference to that sentiment, sought a quarrel 
with the Dey, bombarded Algiers, and compelled 
the Barbary States to agree to put an end to 
piracy — an agreement which remained for some 
time a dead letter. 



The Louisiana Purchase was crowned in 1818 
by the purchase of Florida from Spain. Spanish 
authority in North America had long been little 
more than a thin disguise, behind which the 
British plotted and operated against the welfare 
of the United States. General Jackson had found 
it necessary in 1814 to capture Pensacola, which 
the English were using as a base of hostilities. 
Again in 1818 General Jackson invaded Florida 
to punish Indians who, incited by British sub- 
jects under Spanish protection, were plundering 
and murdering in American settlements. Jackson 
took by force the Spanish post of St. Marks, 
entered Pensacola, and attacked the fort at Bar- 
rancas, compelling it to surrender. Two British 
subjects who had stirred up the Indians to attack 
the Americans were executed. Secretary of State 



The Land We Live In. 253 

John Quincy Adams sustained Jackson, notwith- 
standing the protests of Spain, and the latter 
power concluded to yield to the inevitable, and 
sold Florida to the United States on the extinc- 
tion of the various American claims for spoliation, 
for the satisfaction of which the United States 
agreed to pay 15,000,000 to the claimants. Thus 
all foreign authority was extinguished in the 
Southeast and the American flag waved from the 
Florida Keys to the boundaries of New Spain. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

The Missouri Compromise— Erie Canal Opened— Political 
Parties and Great National Issues— President Jackson 
Crushes the United States Bank— South Carolina Pro- 
nounces the Tariff Law Void— Jackson's Energetic Ac- 
tion—A Compromise — Territory Reserved for the Indians 
—The Seminole War— Osceola's Vengeance— His Capture 
and Death— The Black Hawk War— Abraham Lincoln a 
Volunteer — Texas War for Independence— Massacre of the 
Alamo — Mexican Defeat at San Jacinto— The Mexican 
President a Captive— Texas Admitted to the Union- 
Oregon— American Statesmen Blinded by the Hudson 
Bay Company— Marcus Whitman's Ride— Oregon Saved 
to the Union— The " Dorr War." 

The Missouri Compromise, by which Congress, 
after admitting Missouri as a slave State, took 
the parallel of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes 
as a dividing line through the rest of the Louis- 
iana Purchase, between slavery and freedom, 
averted for another generation the great struggle 
between North and South. At peace with the 
rest of the world, the United States had time to 
devote to national development without the dis- 
traction of war, and financial questions, the tariff 
and internal improvements engrossed the atten- 
tion of Congress and of the States. The opening 
of the Erie Canal, connecting Lake Erie with the 
Hudson River, in 1825, made central New York 



254 The Land We Live In. 

the great highway of commerce and of travel, 
and New York gradually became the leading 
State of the Union in population, wealth and 
trade. There was a strong agitation in favor of 
a general system of roads and canals, connecting 
the various parts of the country, and to be con- 
structed at the expense of the nation, and not of 
the States. The party known as National Re- 
publicans, direct successors of the Federalists, 
supported this proposition, and also advocated a 
high tariff on imports and an extension of the 
charter of the United States Bank, about co expire 
in 1836. The Democratic Republicans, now 
known simply as Democrats, denied the constitu- 
tional authority of the national government to 
construct roads and canals, or to impose a tariff 
except for revenue, or to charter a national bank. 
During the administration of John Quincy Adams 
the National Republicans succeeded in having 
tariff laws enacted in 1824 and 1828, which gave 
substantial and, in the view of the Democrats, 
excessive protection to domestic manufactures. 

General Andrew Jackson was elected President 
in 1828, after a most bitter contest, in which 
John Quincy Adams was his opponent. Jackson 
claimed — and the evidence seems to support his 
claim — that the United States Bank had used all its 
influence against him, and had even made an- 
tagonism to Jackson a condition of mercantile 
accommodation. He had long before been pre- 
judiced against the bank through the stupid red 
tapeism of an agent of the bank in New Orleans 
who stood by a rule not intended for emergencies 
when Jackson needed money for his army. He 
was convinced that not only all the power of the 
bank, but all the*power which the Federal Gov- 
ernment could exert to defeat him had been 
exerted, and being victorious in despite of this 
opposition, he resolved to crush the bank and to 
make a clean sweep of the officeholders. The old 



The Land We Live In. 255 

pamphlets in the Astor Library which tell the 
story of the bank's struggle to escape annihilation 
are almost pathetic reading. The giant was 
prostrate, and his enemy had no mercy. In 1832 
Jackson vetoed the bill to renew the charter of 
the bank. Re-elected President in 1832 by an 
overwhelming majority of votes in the Electoral 
College, Jackson, in the following year, removed 
the public money which had been deposited in 
the tFnited States Bank, and distributed it among 
various State banks. The Senate censured Jack- 
son, but the censure was expunged after a long 
struggle, in which Senator Thomas Hart Benton, 
of Missouri, championed the President. 

The opposition to a tariff for protection was 
very bitter in the South, where the people re- 
garded the tariff duties as a tribute exacted from 
them for the benefit of the North. This feeling 
was especially strong in South Carolina, where a 
State convention undertook to pronounce the 
tariff law null and void, and held out a threat of 
secession should the Federal Government attempt 
to collect the duties. The States of Alabama, 
Tennessee and Georgia took firm ground against 
nullification, and on December 10, 1832, President 
Jackson issued his famous proclamation, exhort- 
ing all persons to obey the laws, and denouncing 
the South Carolina ordinance, "I consider 
then," said the President, "the power to annul 
a law of the United States, assumed by one State, 
incompatible with the existence of the Union, 
contradicted expressly by the letter of the Con- 
stitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent 
with every principle on which it was founded, 
and destructive of the great object for which it 
was formed. ' ' The President declared it to be 
his intent to "take care that the laws be faithfully 
executed," and he warned the citizens of South 
Carolina that "the course they are urged to 
pursue is one of ruin and disgrace to the very 



256 The Land Wz Live Ln. 

State whose rights they affect to support.'* 
Major Heileman, commanding the United States 
troops at Charleston, was instructed to be vigilant 
in defeating any attempt to seize the forts m that 
harbor, and two companies of artillery were 
ordered to Fort Moultrie. The Unionist senti- 
ment in South Carolina itself was strong, and the 
crisis fortunately passed without any attempt to 
carry into execution the nullification ordinance. 
Excitement ran high, however, until the adoption 
in March, 1833, of a compromise tariff, which 
provided for a gradual reduction of duties. 

******* 
General Jackson in his annual message of 1830, 
recommended the devotion of a large tract ot 
land, west of the Mississippi, to the use of the 
Indian tribes vet remaining east of that river 
and Congress, in 1834, enacted that all that part 
of the United States west of the Mississippi River, 
and not within the States of Missouri and Louis- 
iana or the Territory of Arkansas, shall be con- 
sidered the Indian country." This was the 
origin of the present Indian Territory, gradually 
reduced in area by the successive formation of 
States and Territories. The Semmoles of Florida 
naturally objected to removal from the jand ot 
their ancestors to a far-distant region, and under 
the leadership of a brave and skillful chief named 
Osceola they resisted the troops sent to coerce 
them into obedience. The most memorable event 
of the war was the massacre of Major Dade and 
about one hundred soldiers in an ambuscade, 
December 28, 1835. On the same day Osceola 
with a small party of followers killed and scalped 
General Wiley Thomson, of the Unified States 
armv and five of Thomson's friends. Before the 
opening of hostilities Thomson had put Osceola 
in irons on account of his refractory attitude 
and the Indian chief long planned the act ot 



The Land We Live In. 257 

vengeance whicli he thus signally executed. The 
war lasted almost seven years, and was attended 
with a distressing loss of life and property. Not 
less than 9000 United States troops were in 
the Seminole territory in the latter part of 1837, 
and while the Indians were more than once 
severely chastised when brought to an engage- 
ment, it was almost impossible to pursue them 
in their native everglades. Osceola was taken 
prisoner when in conference, under a flag of 
truce, with General Jesup, of the United States 
army, but the Seminoles maintained the struggle 
under other leaders, and it was not until 1842 
that peace was established, and the Indians 
driven to surrender. Osceola did not live to see 
the defeat of the cause for which he had fought 
so resolutely. He died of fever at Fort Moultrie 
on the last day of 1839. 



The Black Hawk War in the Northwest was, as 
usual with Indian wars, a struggle on the part of 
the red men to retain the lands of their fathers. 
Black Hawk was a noted chief of the Sacs and 
Foxes, and he claimed that the original treaty by 
which his tribe sold all their lands in Illinois 
to the United States was made by only four 
chiefs, and that they were drunk when they 
signed it. Assuming this charge to be true it 
remains that the provisions of the first treaty 
were confirmed by two subsequent treaties, the 
last in 1830, when the principal chief, Keokuk, 
made the final cession to the United States of all 
the country owned by the Sacs and Foxes east of 
the Mississippi River. This was done without 
the knowledge of Black Hawk, whose indigna- 
tion was greatly aroused upon hearing of the 
negotiation. Black Hawk was yet more enraged 
when he found, in April, 1831, that during the 
absence of himself and his people from their 

17 



:258 The Land We Live In. 

village on a hunting expedition a fur-trader had 
purchased from the government the ground on 
which the village stood, and was preparing to 
cultivate the field upon which the Indians had 
for many years raised their corn. This was in 
violation of the letter and spirit of the treaty, 
which provided that the Indians could occupy 
their lands until they were needed for settlement, 
and the frontier settlements were yet fifty miles 
distant. War soon followed between the whites 
and Indians, Abraham Lincoln, afterward Presi- 
dent of the United States, being enlisted as a 
volunteer. Colonel Zachary Taylor, afterward 
President, was one of the officers in command of 
the United States troops. After fighting with 
varied fortunes for several months, Black Hawk 
was defeated with the loss of many warriors, and 
fled to a village of the Winnebagoes. The latter 
escorted the fallen chieftain to the United States 
authorities at Prairie du Chien. "Black Hawk is 
an Indian," said the captive warrior, speaking in 
the third person. ' ' He has done nothing an In- 
dian need be ashamed of. He has fought the 
battles of his country against the white men, who 
come year after year to cheat them and take 
away their lands. He will go to the world of 
spirits contented. ' ' Black Hawk was well treated 
as a prisoner, taken to Washington to visit the 
President, and liberated after peace had been 
made. 



During Jackson's second term the American 
settlers in Texas succeeded, after a conflict at- 
tended by signal heroism and ferocity, in se- 
curing their independence of Mexico. The 
massacre of the Alamo by the Mexicans under 
Santa Anna, will always be remembered in 
American history. The Mission of the Alamo, 
which the Texans defended to the death against 



The Land We Live Ln, 259 

overwhelming numbers, was entirely isolated 
from the town of San Antonio. It consisted of 
several buildings, and a convent yard, sur- 
rounded by high and thick walls, having partly, 
like all the old missions, the character of a 
fortress. Fourteen pieces of artillery were 
mounted for the defence, and the garrison, when 
it entered the Alamo, consisted of one hundred 
and forty-five men, untrained in arms, except in 
the use of the rifle. Their leader was Lieutenant 
Colonel William Barret Travis, a native of North 
Carolina, and second in command was Colonel 
James Bowae, inventor of the terrible bowie-knife. 
Santa Anna, the President of Mexico, was in 
personal command of the attacking forces, num- 
bering between 6000 and 7000 men. He declared 
that he would grant no quarter. The troops 
ordered to the assault numbered 2500, or about 
twenty-five Mexicans to one American. The 
deadly fire from the Alamo twice repelled the 
enemy, but they were driven on by the blows 
and shouts of their officers, and at the third 
attempt they scaled the wall, and carried the de- 
fences. While life lasted the Texans fought. 
They had agreed to blow up the buildings in the 
last extremity, but Major T. C. Evans, when 
about to fire the magazine, was struck down by 
a bullet. Not a defender who could be found 
was spared. Five Texans who had hidden them- 
selves were taken before Santa Anna. At a word 
from that monster of cruelty they were at once 
dispatched with bayonets. 

The Alamo was not long unavenged. The 
massacre took place on March 6, 1836. On April 
21, the Texans, led by General Sam Houston, 
met the Mexicans at San Jacinto. The Texans 
numbered 743 ; the Mexicans about 1400, with 
Santa Anna in command. Houston, by strategy 
worthy of greater fame, had managed to come 
UDon the Mexican President when the latter was 



26o The Land We Live In. 

separated from the larger part of his forces. De- 
termined to win or die, Houston destroyed a 
bridge which afforded the only retreat for his 
men or escape for the enemy. The Texans 
delivered one volley at close range, and then 
clubbed their rifles or drew their bowie-knives, 
with the cry — ' ' Remember the Alamo ! " In fifteen 
minutes the Mexicans were in flight, pursued by 
the yelling Texans. "Me no Alamo! Me no 
Alamo ! ' ' cried the terrified fugitives. The 
Texans did not stay their hands until they had 
killed six hundred and thirty and wounded two 
hundred and eight of their cowardly foes. The 
remainder of the Mexicans were allowed to sur- 
render, and were not maltreated as prisoners. 
Santa Anna was captured while hiding in the 
grass at some distance from the battlefield, and 
brought, a pallid and trembling captive, before 
Houston. The latter spared the tyrant's life, and 
placed a guard to protect him. The battle of San 
Jacinto virtually put an end to the war, and Texas 
remained the Lone Star Republic, until admitted 
to the American Union in 1845. 



This period witnessed also the successful asser- 
tion of American title to that extensive and 
productive region now divided into the States of 
Oregon, Washington and Idaho. President Jeffer- 
son had seen almost with the vision of prophecy 
the future of that distant portion of the Louisiana 
Purchase. ' ' I looked forward with gratification, ' ' 
he said in his later years, ' ' to the time when the 
descendants of the settlers of Oregon would spread 
themselves through the whole length of the coast, 
covering it with free, independent Americans, 
unconnected with us but by the ties of blood and 
interest, and enjoying, like us, the rights of self- 
government. ' ' And yet, for forty years after the 
treaty which transferred to the United States the 



The Land We Live In, 261 

possessions of France in America, the leading 
statesmen of our republic, Jefferson excepted, 
remained blind to the value of America's domain 
on the Pacific. In 1810, John Jacob Astor's 
American Fur Company undertook to establish a 
post upon what they regarded as American soil, 
at a place which the founders called Astoria. 
The Hudson Bay Company then claimed Oregon 
as part of their territory, and when the War of 
1812 broke out the British attacked Astoria, took 
the Americans prisoners, and changed the name 
of the post to Fort George. The Astor attempt 
to found a settlement in Oregon was not without 
favorable bearing on American claims to that 
territory, especially as the enterprise had the 
sanction of the United States Government, and a 
United States naval officer commanded the lead- 
ing vessel in the expedition. Under the treaty 
of Ghent, Astoria was to be restored to its original 
owners, but it was not until 1846 that this act of 
justice was consummated. In 1818 it was mutu- 
ally agreed that each nation should equally enjoy 
the privileges of all the bays and harbors on* that 
coast for ten years, and this agreement was re- 
newed in 1827 for an indefinite time. Practically 
this meant the occupation of the country by the 
Hudson Bay Company, which found its forests 
and waters a mine of fur-bearing wealth. The 
most eminent of America's statesmen, so far as 
the Pacific Northwest was concerned, seemed to 
be under the spell of their own ignorance and of 
the Hudson Bay Company's misrepresentations. 
The great Senator Benton said that, ' ' The ridge 
of the Rocky Mountains may be named as a con- 
venient, natural and everlasting boundary. ' ' 
Winthrop, of Massachusetts, quoted and com- 
mended this statement of Benton, and McDufiBe 
of South Carolina declared that the wealth of the 
Indies would be insufficient to pay the cost of a 
railroad to the mouth of the Columbia. While 



262 The Land We Live In. 

the nation was stirred up over a boundary dispute 
involving a comparatively small district in the 
Northeast — settled by the Ashburton Treaty in 
1842 — Oregon, with its extensive territory and 
magnificent natural wealth was treated as un- 
worthy of controversy. But for the patriot mis- 
sionary, Marcus Whitman, who in the winter of 
1842-43 made a perilous journey from his mission 
post in Oregon to Washington, to stir up the 
American Government to a sense of its duty, and 
of the imminent danger of the seizure of Oregon 
by the British, that valuable region would in all 
probability have passed under British dominion. 
"All I ask," said Doctor Whitman to President 
Tyler, "is that you won't barter away Oregon or 
allow Bnglish interference until I can lead a band 
of stalwart American settlers across the plains ; 
for this I will try to do. * ' The President prom- 
ised; the settlers went, and Oregon was saved. '^ 
For a time it seemed that war might result, but 
the two nations at length compromised ou a 
houndary line at forty-nine north latitude. 

During President Tyler's administration Rhode 
Island was the scene of a commotion known as 
the "Dorr War." While the property qualifica- 
tion for voters had been discarded in nearly every 



* It is sad to know that this patriot missionary and his 
admirable wife were massacred in 1847, with a number of 
other persons, at their mission station of Waiilatpwi by the 
very Indians they were educating. There is reason to 
beUeve that the massacre was indirectly the result of 
Whitman's service to his country in rescuing Oregon from 
the Hudson Bay Company. The treaty of 1846 greatly irri- 
tated that powerful corporation, and this feeling inevitably 
spread to the Indians who depended upon the company for 
supplies, and who naturally sympathized with its policy of 
keeping the land for fur-bearing auimals and savage 
humanity. It is unnecessar3' to suspect the company or 
the Roman Catholic missionaries attached to the company 
■of any plot against Whitman's life. It was sufficient for 
the savages to know that the company hated Whitman, and 
that the American Protestant missionaries sought to con- 
vert them not only to Christianity, but also to industry. 



The Land We Live Ln. 263- 

Northern State, Rhode Island still adhered to the 
system of government provided in the King 
Charles charter of 1663, which restricted the 
franchise to freeholders and their eldest sons. 
This restriction gave occasion for many abuses, 
mortgagees often exercising control over the votes 
of their debtors, and citizens who paid taxes on 
mortgaged property being sometimes denied the 
privilege of voting on the ground that they did 
not possess sufficient equity in their estates. The 
majority of the people desired a frame of govern- 
ment in accord with the spirit of American in- 
stitutions, but were resisted by the minority in 
actual power. The party of reform, therefore, 
held an election in defiance of the charter, adopted 
a new constitution and chose Thomas W. Dorr 
governor, along with other general officers and a 
General Assembly. The Dorr legislature met in 
a foundry and passed various laws, which they 
had no power to enforce. The charter govern- 
ment called out the militia, the Dorrites also 
took arms, and for some time there was danger of 
a collision. The Dorrites were ultimately dis- 
persed without a battle, and the charter govern- 
ment remained in power. From a sanitary 
standpoint it was a healthy war, as more people 
were probably benefited by the outing than in- 
jured by bullets and bayonets.* Dorr was after- 
ward sentenced to State Prison for life, but was 
pardoned after a few years, and his sentence ex- 
punged by vote of the legislature, from the 
records of the court, A constitution embodying 
most of the reforms for which the Dorrites had 

* The " Dorr war," however, was very real to the people 
of Rhode Island. About thirteen years ago the writer was 
present in the office of the clerk of a Rhode Island town, 
when an old lady entered, and told the clerk that she 
wanted to see the recoid of a deed. Upon being asked to 
indicate the probable date, she said it was "before the 
war." On inquiry by the clerk it appeared that she meant. 
the " Dorr war." 



264 The Land We Live In. 

striven was legally adopted, and Rhode Island 
settled down to its customary calm and prosperity. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

War with Mexico— General Zachary Taylor Defeats the 
Mexicans— Buena Vista— Mexicans Four to One— "A L,ittle 
More Grape, Captain Bragg !"— Glorious American Vic- 
tory — General Scott's Splendid Campaign— A Series of 
Victories— Cerro Gordo — Contreras— Churubusco — Molino 
del Rey—Chapultepec— Stars and Stripes Float in the City 
of Mexico — Generous Treatment of the Vanquished — 
Peace — Cession of Vast Territory to the United States— 
The Gadsden Purchase. 

The annexation of Texas by the United States 
was accepted by Mexico as an act of war. The 
American Government and people were not unpre- 
pared for a challenge from Mexico, and rather 
welcomed it, as, apart from the Texas issue, 
Mexico had, from the time of her independence 
treated the United States in a manner far from 
neighborly, and inflicted many injuries on 
American citizens. In the West and South espe- 
cially it was deemed necessary to give Mexico a 
lesson ; in New England the war was not popular. 
Hostilities began, and two sharp battles were 
fought, before war was actually declared. Gen- 
eral Zachary Ta3dor, with a force much inferior 
to that of the enemy, defeated the Mexicans at 
Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and drove 
them out of Texas. At Resaca the American 
dragoons under Captain May charged straight 
upon a Mexican battery, killing the gunners and 
capturing the Mexican general La Vega just as 
he was about to apply a match to one of the 
pieces. The Mexican army was so completely 
scattered that their commander Arista fled unac- 
companied across the Rio Grande. At Buena 
Vista Generals Taylor and Wool, with 5000 men, 



The Land We Live In. 265. 

of whom only 500 were regular troops, confronted 
Santa Anna with 20,000, February 23, 1847. The 
Mexican chieftain expected an easy victory, and 
his army, inspired with his confidence, rushed 
from their mountains upon the small force of 
Americans drawn up in battle array on the plain: 
of Angostura, 

" lyike the fierce Northern hurricane 
That sweeps his great plateau, 
Flushed with the triumph yet to gain, 
Came down the serried foe. 
Who heard the thunder of the fray 
Break o'er the field beneath, 
Well knew the watchword of that day 
Was victory or death." * 

The battle lasted all day, the American artillery 
being splendidly handled, and mowing down the 
Mexicans at every charge. "Give 'em a little 
more grape. Captain Bragg!" said Taylor quietly, 
as he saw Santa Anna's lines wavering. The 
grape was given, and the Mexicans fled, leaving 
500 of their number dead or dying on the field. 
The total Mexican loss, including wounded and 
prisoners was about 2000 ; that of the Americans 
in killed, wounded and missing, 746. This vic- 
tory, and the successes of Fremont and Kearney 
in California, completed the conquest of Northern 
Mexico. 

General Winfield Scott, who was in supreme 
command of all the American forces, conducted 
a brilliant campaign from the coast. After tak- 
ing Vera Cruz and the castle of San Juan de 
Ulloa, General Scott advanced toward the City of 
Mexico with about 10,000 men. At Cerro Gordo, 
a difficult pass in the mountains, the American 
army encountered 12,000 Mexicans under com- 
mand of Santa Anna, who had, by extraordinary- 
efforts, collected this force after his defeat at 



* " The Bivouac of the Bead."— O'Hara. 



266 The Land We Live In. 

Buena Vista. The battle was fought on April i8, 
every movement of the American troops being 
directed, according to a carefully prepared plan, 
by General Scott. Colonel Harvey led the storm- 
ing party into the pass, with a deep river on one 
side, and batteries belching death from lofty 
rocks on the other side. The Americans rushed 
forward with irresistible courage. They knew 
their enemy. The Alamo had not been forgotten. 
Cerro Gordo fell, and the flight of the Mexicans 
may best be described in the' language of one of 
their own historians: "General Santa Anna, 
accompanied by some of his adjutants, was pass- 
ing along the road to the left of the battery, 
when the enemy's column, now out of the woods, 
appeared on his line of retreat and fired upon 
him, forcing him back. The carriage in which 
he had left Jalapa was riddled with shot, the 
mules killed and taken by the enemy, as well as 
a wagon containing |;i6,ooo received the day 
before for the pay of the soldiers. Every tie of 
command and obedience now being broken 
among our troops, safety alone being the object, 
and all being involved in a frightful confusion, 
they rushed desperately to the narrow pass of the 
defile that descended to the Plan del Rio, where 
the general-in-chief had proceeded, with the chiefs 
and ofiicers accompanying him. Horrid indeed 
was the descent by that narrow and rocky path 
where thousands rushed, disputing the passage 
with desperation, and leaving a track of blood 
upon the road. All classes being confounded 
military distinction and respect were lost; and 
badges of rank became marks of sarcasm. The 
enemy, now masters of our camp, turned their guns 
upon the fugitives, thus augmenting the terror of 
the multitude that crowded through the defile and 
pressed forward every instant by a new impulse, 
which increased the confusion and disgrace of 
that ill-fated day." Of the 12,000 Mexicans 



77?^' Land We Live Ln. 267 

engaged in this battle about 1200 were killed and 
wounded, and 3000 were made prisoners. The cap- 
tives were all paroled, and the sick and wounded 
sent to Jalapa, where they were well cared for. 
The Castle of Perote, the strongest fortress in 
Mexico, surrendered without resistance, and the 
American flag was unfurled on the summit of the 
eastern Cordilleras. 

After a rest at Puebla General Scott pushed on 
in the footsteps of Cortes. Santa Anna, who 
would have equalled Napoleon or Caesar had his 
ability and courage in the field been equal to his 
success in organizing armies, made a stand with 
32,000 Mexicans at Contreras and Churubusco. 
The army of General Scott numbered about 9000 
effective men. Both sides knew that the battle lb 
be fought would decide the fate of the City of 
Mexico. On the nineteenth of August about one- 
half of the American army attacked the fortified 
camp at Contreras, defended by nearly 7000 
Mexicans, under General Valencia. Evening fell 
without victory for either side. In the early 
morning, after a night of heavy rain, General P. 
F. Smith, with three brigades of infantry, but 
without cavalry or artillery, marched in the dark- 
ness up to the Mexican camp, discharged several 
volleys in quick succession, and dashed, bayonet 
in hand, upon the enemy. In fifteen minutes 
the Americans were victors, over 3000 Mexicans 
were prisoners, and the rest of Valencia's troops 
were fugitives. The American army gave the 
enemy no time to recover, but moved promptly 
forward to more victories. The fort of San An- 
tonio was captured, the garrison not waiting to 
be attacked before taking to flight, and then 
began the battle of Churubusco. This place is a 
small village, six miles south from the City of 
Mexico, and connected with it by a spacious 
causeway. At the head of the causeway, near 
the village, and in front of the bridge over the 



26S The Land We Live Ln. 

Churubusco River, was a strong redoubt, mounted 
with batteries, and occupied by a large force of 
Mexicans. The convent-church of San Pablo, 
with its massive stone walls, was converted into 
a fort. The walls were impervious to the attack 
of field pieces, and the building was defended by 
a well-constructed bastion, and guns placed in 
the embrasure. The church stood on an eminence, 
and the village which clustered about it was de- 
fended by stone walls and a stone building, 
strongly fortified. 

The Americans carried the redoubt at the point 
of the bayonet, and then a desperate battle raged 
about the fortified village and church. From be- 
liind their defences the Mexicans kept up a deadly 
lire on the Americans, but the latter never faltered. 
The Mexicans made repeated sallies from the con- 
vent, but were driven back every time. In their des- 
peration the native Mexicans desired to surrender, 
but some deserters from the American army, known 
as the San Patricio companies, hauled down the 
white flag whenever it was put up. At length after 
a three-hours' struggle the convent and other de- 
fences were captured. In the rear of Churubusco 
General James Shields and General Franklin 
Pierce, afterward President of the United States, 
were hard pressed by an overwhelming force of 
Mexicans, and in some danger. Timely rein- 
forcements sent by General Scott turned danger 
into victory, and the Mexicans, discomfited on 
every side, gave way, and retreated in utter dis- 
order toward the city of Mexico, pursued by the 
triumphant Americans. It was the most glorious 
day since Yorktown for American arms. The 
Mexican loss was nearly 4000 killed and wounded, 
besides 300 prisoners, thirty-seven cannon and a 
large quantity of small arms and ammunition. 
The Americans lost 139 killed and 926 wounded. 

Churubusco should have ended the war, and 
negotiations for peace were comm-enced, but were 



The Land We Live In. 269 

broken off through Mexican bad faith. Hostili- 
ties were resumed and the coup-de-grace was 
given to Mexico on the historic hill of Chapul- 
tepec. The storming of El Molino del Rey, of 
the Casa de Mata and the Castle of Chapultepec 
were among the boldest exploits of the war. 
Chapultepec had been an ancient seat of the 
Aztec emperors. Rising abruptly from the shore 
of Lake Tezcuco, crowned with a strongly forti- 
fied castle, supported by numerous outworks and 
with several massive stone buildings, each a 
fortress powerfully garrisoned, at the base, the 
hill of Chapultepec seemed a very Gibraltar 
guarding the entrance to Mexico's capital. El 
Molino del Rey and the Casa de Mata were 
carried by storm on the eighth of September, the 
Mexicans leaving 1000 dead on the field, beside 
800 prisoners, and those who escaped death or 
capture either flying in dismay from the scene or 
retreating up the hill to the Castle of Chapul- 
tepec. 

General Scott determined to batter down the 
castle with heavy cannon. Robert E. Lee, after- 
ward commander of the Confederate armies, was 
one of the oflScers who placed the artillery in 
position. A continuous fire was kept up during 
the first day (September 12), the solid shot and 
shell crashing through the Castle and killing; 
many of its defenders. Among these were about 
one hundred young boys, from ten to sixteen 
years of age, cadets in the Military Academy, 
which was situated on the hill of Chapultepec. 
Several of the boys lost their lives fighting the 
Americans with a valor that might well have put 
some of their elders to shame. About fifty general 
officers were also in the Castle, and the whole Mexi- 
can force engaged probably did not exceed 4000 
men. It was the last stand made by Mexican 
troops, and it was a brave stand. The weak and the 
demoralized had slunk away from further conflict 



270 The Land We Live In. 

with an invincible foe. The bombardment was 
resumed on the thirteenth, and troops moved to 
the assault under cover of a heavy cannonade. 
The Mexicans fought desperately, but they were 
no match for their antagonists. The Stars and 
Stripes soon floated over Chapultepec, hailed 
with a mighty cheer by the American troops, 
nearl}^ all of whom had taken some part in the 
conflict. 

On September 14 the American flag was hoisted 
in the City of Mexico, and from the National 
Palace of that Republic General Scott issued a 
general order in which, with justifiable pride, 
he declared : ' ' Beginning with August 10 and 
ending the fourteenth instant, this army has 
gallantly fought its way through the fields and 
forts of Contreras, San Antonio, Churubusco, 
Molino del Rey, Chapultepec and the gates of 
San Cosme and Tacubaya into the capital of 
Mexico. When the very limited number who 
have performed these brilliant deeds shall have 
become known, the world will be astonished and 
our own countrymen filled with joy and admira- 
tion. ' ' The triumphs of Scott and Taylor added 
lustre to American arms which time wall not 
efface. They recalled the exploits of Cortes and 
Pizarro, save in the scrupulous honor and 
humanity which guided every step of the Ameri- 
can invasion. No victors were ever more gener- 
ous in their treatment of the conquered. "The 
soldiers of Vera Cruz, " says a Mexican historian, 
"received the honor due to their valor and mis- 
fortunes. Not even a look was given them by 
the enemy's soldiers which could be interpreted 
into an insult." The Duke of Wellington, the 
conqueror of Napoleon, followed Scott's campaign 
with deep interest and caused its movements to 
be marked on a map daily, as information w^as 
received. Admiring its triumphs up to the basin 
of Mexico, Wellington then said: "Scott is lost. 



The Land We Live Ln. 271 

He has been carried away by successes. He can't 
take the city, and he can't fall back on his 
base." Wellington proved to be wrong. He 
had never met American troops. 

The treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, concluded 
February 2, 1848, established the Rio Grande as 
the boundary between the United States and 
Mexico, and California and New Mexico, includ- 
ing what is now Arizona, were ceded to the 
United States for $15,000,000. The United States 
also assumed the payment of obligations due by 
Mexico to American citizens to the amount of 
^3,250,000, and discharged Mexico from all 
claims of citizens of the United States against 
that Republic. Strict provision was made for 
the preservation of the rights of the inhabitants 
of the ceded territory. The Gadsden Purchase, 
in 1853 — so called from General James Gadsden, 
who conducted the negotiations in behalf of the 
United States — added 45,535 square miles of 
Mexican territory to the United States, for which 
this country paid |io, 000,000, Mexico at the 
same time relinqviishing claims against the 
United States for Indian depredations amounting 
to from $15,000,000 to $30,000,000. The Ameri- 
can Republic thus received in all, as a conse- 
quence of the Mexican War, 591,398 square miles, 
and the Union acquired its present boundaries, 
exclusive of Alaska. The Mexican War gave to the 
United States the Pacific as well as the Atlantic 
seaboard, and completed the westward movement 
which had begun with the very birth of the 
Republic. It made the United States the great 
power of the American continent, seated between 
the two oceans, with a domain unequalled in 
natural resources by any other region of the 
world. 



272 The Land We Live In. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

The Union in 1850— Comparative Population of Cities and 
Rural Districts— Agriculture the General Occupation — 
Commercial and Industrial Development — Growth of New 
York and Chicago— The Southern States— Importance of 
the Cotton Crop— Why the South Was Sensitive to Anti- 
Slavery Agitation— Manufactures— Religion and Educa- 
tion—The Cloud on the Horizon. 

Approaching that period of civil discord, fol- 
lowed by civil war, which has left its impress in 
every corner of the Union, and which was at- 
tended by radical changes in the Constitution 
and the institutions of our country, it may be 
well to review the material condition of the States 
when the forces of freedom and slavery began to 
gather for the great conflict, first in the forum 
and later in the field. In 1850 the United States 
had a population of 23, 191,876, of whom 3,204,313 
were slaves. Only 4,000,000 of the people lived 
in cities, towns and villages, and of these but 
2,860,000 resided in 140 cities and towns of more 
than 10,000 inhabitants each. Of the total real 
and personal property in the United States more 
than two-thirds was owned by the rural popula- 
tion, and the value of manufactures was insignifi- 
cant, compared with the products of agriculture. 
One leading aim of American statesmanship and 
enterprise had been, from a very early period, to 
connect the great lakes and the fertile valleys 
of the middle and western States with the cities 
and ports along the Atlantic seaboard; to improve 
navigation of the rivers, and thus bring into cul- 
tivation the valuable tracts of country along their 
banks ; and, as a part of this great work, to con- 
nect with each other, by railways and canals, the 
towns and villages in the more densely-peopled 
and cultivated districts. To carry out the general 



The Land We Live l7t. 273 

design, vast sums were lavished and expensive 
works constructed, in many instances far in ad- 
vance of any ascertained requirements of the coun- 
try, and certainly with little prospect of an early 
return for the expenditure. But in the meantime 
the most apparently hopeless of these works con- 
ferred important benefits upon the mass of the 
community, by developing sources of wealth 
which might otherwise have been closed for years, 
and providing new spheres for the restless and 
indomitable energy of the American. 

While the agricultural portion of the American 
people were extending the area of their location, 
and laying under the Constitution new and vast 
sources of wealth, the cities and towns also grew 
apace under the impulse of commercial and indus- 
trial development. No country in the world. Great 
Britain not excepted, succeeded more signally in 
directing its natural advantages to the promotion 
of commerce. The abundance of water power was 
utilized for manufactures of every description. 
Machinery of the most perfect kind was applied 
to every process, economizing labor, facilitating 
locomotion and aiding in surmounting those 
diflSculties which had ever impeded the progress 
of young nations. Nowhere was the gigantic 
power of steam more abundantly and usefully 
employed — in the mine and in the mill, on the 
rivers and lakes, the canals and the railroads, 
doing the work of millions of hands and of human 
and animal sinews, without creating a vacuum 
in the market for labor, or diminishing the re- 
wards of industry. From 1830 to 1840, a period of 
only ten years, the increase in the population of 
twenty of the largest cities in the United States, 
from New York to St. Louis inclusive, was fifty- 
five per cent, and this in face of the most disastrous 
commercial panic that had ever visited the coun- 
try, and this marvelous rate of increase was fully 
maintained during the subsequent decade. 
18 



274 The Land We Live In. 

It is not remarkable that the cities and States 
of the Union which first took steps to connect the 
fertile regions lying beyond the Allegheny Moun- 
tains with the Atlantic should have made the 
greatest progress in importance and prosperity. 
It was the fortune of the State of New York to 
take the earliest step to effect this great desidera- 
tum, although Washington had perhaps first sug- 
gested its importance, in agitating a movement 
for the purpose of connecting the country adjoin- 
ing the Great Lakes with his native Virginia. 
The construction of the Krie Canal placed New 
York in the very front of American communities. 
Before the canal was opened the cost of transit 
from Lake Erie to tidewater was such as to pro- 
hibit the shipment of western produce and mer- 
chandise to New York ; and it consequently came 
only to Baltimore and Philadelphia. "As soon 
as the lakes were reached, ' ' says a Federal report, 
"the line of navigable water was extended 
through them nearly one thousand miles farther 
from the interior. The Western States imme- 
diately commenced the construction of similar 
works, for the purpose of opening a communica- 
tion from the more remote portions of their 
territories with this great water-line. All these 
works took their direction and character from the 
Erie Canal, which in this manner became the 
outlet for the greater part of the produce of the 
West. Without such a work the West would 
have had no attractions for a settler, and have 
probably remained a waste up to the present 
time; and New York itself could not have pro- 
gressed as it has done." In addition, however, to 
the formation of the Erie Canal, New York 
originated, in advance of most other States, lines 
of railway throughout its territory, in connection 
either with the canal, or between its various 
towns and settlements. It also connected itself 
by railroad with Lake Champlain, and succeeded 



The Land We Live In. 27$ 

in diverting a considerable portion of the transit 
trade of Canada from the St. Lawrence through 
these communications to the port of New York. 
The effect of this enterprise displayed by the 
people and by the State may be estimated by the 
fact that the population, which was, in 1830, 
1,918,608, had increased in 1840 to 2,428,921, and 
in 1850 was 3,097,394. In 1830, the value of the 
imports at New York was 138,656,064; in 1840 it 
had reached 160,064,942, and in 1851, when the 
network of railway communications throughout 
the State had come into fairly complete opera- 
tion, the value of imports was |i44,454,6i6. 

Under the influence of railroad and canal 
Chicago also made swift and wonderful progress. 
In May, 1848, a canal one hundred miles in 
length was opened to connect Lake Michigan 
with the Illinois River, and the first section of a 
railway from Chicago to the westward was opened 
in March, 1849. Previously to these works being 
brought into operation it appears from the city 
census of 1847 that the population was 16,859; ^^ 
1850, it had sprung to 29,963, and in August, 
1852 It was estimated at nearly, if not quite, 
40,000, having thus considerably more than 
doubled itself in five years. 

The efforts of the Southern States to attract 
toward their ports the produce of the West, by 
way of the magnificent rivers which empty them- 
selves into the Gulf of Mexico, rivalled those 
made by the North. The prosperity of these 
States was greatly promoted by the growing de- 
mand for cotton in America and Europe. In the 
thirty-one years from 1821 to 1852, there had 
been an increase of 3, 000, 000 bales in the growth, 
which multiplied itself during that period seven- 
fold ! The importance of this crop as an element 
of wealth may be estimated from the fact that 
the census value of it in 1849-50 was $112,000,000; 
that its cultivation and preparation for market 



276 The Land We Live In. 

employed upward of 800,000 agricultural laborers, 
85 per cent of whom were slaves and the 
residue (120,000) white citizens; that upward of 
120,000 tons of steam shipping, and at least 7000 
persons were engaged in its transportation from 
the interior to the southern ports, and that after 
remunerating merchants, factors, underwriters 
and a host of other persons it furnished profitable 
freight for 1,100,000 tons of American shipping, 
and 55,000 seamen in the Gulf and Atlantic coast- 
ing trade, and for 800,000 tons and 40,000 seamen 
for its transport to Europe and elsewhere. As 
the Southern people generally believed that cotton 
could not be cultivated without the labor of slaves 
it is easy to understand why they were sensitive 
to every agitation, however slight, that seemed 
to threaten that source of wealth, and how their 
sensitiveness grew as cotton's empire extended. 

Manufactures were also in a flourishing condi- 
tion, and it was estimated in 1852, that the 
capital embarked in the cotton manufactories of 
the United States was at least |8o,ooo,ooo; that 
the value of the products was $70, 000, 000 ; that 
100,000 male and female operatives were em- 
ployed, and that quite 700,000 bales of cotton, 
worth at least $35,000,000, were spun and woven. 
America possessed, also, a number of woolen 
manufactories, which employed about the same 
period 39,252 hands. 

The American people, then as now, believed 
in religion and education as the corner-stones of 
liberty's temple. The population of 23,000,000 
in 1850 had 36,221 churches and chapels, with, 
accommodation for 13,967,449 persons — a large 
accommodation for a new country whose popula- 
tion had spread so rapidly over so extensive an 
area. Of the youth nearly 4,000,000 were receiv- 
ing instruction in the various educational institu- 
tions. The teachers numbered 115,000, and 
colleges and schools nearly 100,000, America 



The Land We Live In. I'j'] 

"had upward of seventy theological schools ; forty- 
four medical and surgical schools ; nineteen 
schools of law, and ten schools of practical 
science and extensive libraries were attached to 
nearly all of these institutions. 

Never had the future of our nation seemed more 
promising than at the very time when the cloud 
of slavery began to darken the bright horizon, 
gradually overspreading the heavens until it burst 
in the storm of secession. 



The Slavery Conflict. 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Aggressiveness of Slavery— The Cotton States and Border 
States— The Fugitive Slave L,aw— Nullified in the North- 
Negroes Imported from Africa — The Struggle in Kansas — 
John Brown — Abraham I,incoIn Pleads for Human Rights 
— Treason in Buchanan's Cabinet— Citizens Stop Guns at 
Pittsburg — Conditions at the Beginning of the Struggle — 
Southern Advantages — The Soldiers of Both Armies Com- 
pared— Conscription in the Confederacy- Southern Re- 
sources Limited — The North at a Disadvantage at First, 
but Its Resources Inexhaustible — Conscription in the 
North— Popular Support of the War— Unfriendliness of 
Great Britain and France— Why They Did Not Interfere. 

Slavery could not stand still. The Cotton 
States, so-called, which suffered least from the 
escape of slaves were the most aggressive in de- 
manding a Fugitive Slave I,aw, while the Border 
States, where escapes were frequent, were not 
nearly as aggressive as their Southern neighbors. 
Attachment to slavery in the Cotton States had 
become a passion, springing from self-interest, 
but stronger than self-interest; while in the 
Border States the slaveholders were affected by 
propinquity to free communities, and the calcula- 
tions of self-interest were softened by their 
surroundings ; which shows, like many another 
chapter in history, that in the mighty impulses 



278 77?^ Land We Live Ln. 

which guide the destinies of nations, the heart 
is above the head. The advocates of slavery felt 
insecure because they knew that even if legally 
right they were divinely and humanly wrong. 
They were not .satisfied to have the Free States 
acquiescent and even submissive ; they were 
determined, in their fever of unrest, to drive 
freedom to the wall, and to make the people of 
the North slave-catchers, if they would not con- 
sent to be slave-owners. 

The South had the Constitution on its side, 
and the Fugitive Slave Law could be met only 
by obedience or nullification. The Northern 
people simply decided to nullify the law. They 
did not meet in State conventions — like South 
Carolina in 1832 — and declare the law void and 
of no effect. They were too sensible for that ; 
but they would not obey the law. It was nullified 
in various ways. In Rhode Island, for instance, 
it was made a crime for an officer of the State to 
arrest a fugitive slave; in Ohio the ordinary 
statute against kidnappers was used to punish 
Federal officers and others attempting to carry 
slaves back into bondage, and in New York and 
other States mob law interfered to rescue and 
liberate the victims. The Fugitive Slave Law 
roused the spirit of freedom, and Northern de- 
fiance of the law inflamed the slaveholders. The 
Kansas-Nebraska bill, menacing the free States 
with a slave barrier West as well as South, and 
stretching to the Pacific as well as the Gulf, made 
civil war almost inevitable. Compromise became 
cowardice, and everyone who was not for free- 
dom was against it. The Supreme Court of the 
United States supported the contentions of the 
slaveholders, but in vain for their cause. That 
higher tribunal — the conscience of a free and in- 
telligent people — arraigned slavery as a crime 
against God and man, the Constitution and the 
Supreme Court to the contrary notwithstanding. 



The Land We Live In. 279 

When Chief Justice Taney held that Dred Scott 
was not a citizen of Missouri, but a thing, and 
could be carried by his master from one State to 
another, like a dog or a watch, and still be a 
slave, the Chief Justice only immortalized his 
own infamy ; he did not immortalize slavery. 
Still greater was the shock when in defiance of 
the Constitution and the laws the foreign slave 
trade was resumed, and negroes imported from 
Africa to the South. It is only just to state that, 
according to recently published narratives of 
these slave importations, with details that could 
not have been related at the time with safety for 
the parties concerned, the Federal authorities in 
the South seem to have made a sincere effort to 
bring the slavetraders to justice, and the planters 
apparently did not welcome the traffic. 

The pioneers of the great struggle to come met 
on the plains of Kansas and several yea -s of fierce 
border strife ended in victory for freedom. John 
Brown, whom the world calls a fanatic, perished 
on the scaffold at Harper's Ferry in a vain 
attempt to liberate the slaves, and while editors 
vacillated and quibbled, and fawning time 
servers applauded, Thoreau, from his hermitage 
in the New England woods, paid eloquent tribute 
to the man who dared to die for the truth. Away 
in the West a figure was looming up, a gaunt, 
homely figure, born in and nurtured in hardship^ 
but endowed as no other man of his age was 
endowed, with the ability to guide his country 
through the awful ordeal to come. He perceived 
the right, and he boldly declared it. "If it is 
decreed that I should go down because of this 
speech, then let me go down linked to the truth 
— let me die in the advocacy of what is just and 
right, ' ' said Abraham lyincoln to the friends 
who disapproved his celebrated declaration that 
the government could not endure half slave, half 
free. ' In the right to eat the bread without the 



28o The Land We Live In. 

leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, 
he (the negro) is my equal, and the equal of 
Judge Douglas, and the ecjual of every living 
man" — was another sterling utterance which 
struck home to the North, 

While Lincoln was pleading the cause of human 
rights, and asserting that the Declaration of In- 
dependence was meant for black as well as white, 
members of President Buchanan's cabinet, hold- 
ing in their grasp the reins of National Govern- 
ment, were plotting the nation's overthrow. 
Even down to the very moment that John B. 
Floyd left the War Office, and when South Caro- 
lina was already in rebellion, this plotting was 
continued. As late as the beginning of January, 
1861, an attempt was made under an order from 
Floyd to remove one hundred and fifty cannon 
from the Allegheny Arsenal, at Pittsburg, to the 
South, to be used against the Union. "Our 
people are a unit that not a gun shall be shipped 
South, ' ' said the Dispatch of that city, and with- 
out violence, without the shedding of a drop of 
blood or the drawing of a weapon against national 
authority, the citizens obtained the reversal of 
the order, and the guns, some of which were 
already under convoy to the wharf, were returned 
to the arsenal. The "Rebellion Records," pub- 
lished by the government, should not begin with 
186 1. They should go back to the time when 
the plot originated to strip the national arsenals 
for the benefit of the nation's enemies, to disarm 
the Union that it might fall a prey to secession. 
This was the treason which should never be for- 
gotten. The men who fought bravely and openly 
in the field for the Confederate cause can be 
respected for their sincerity and honored for their 
valor ; but not so with the men who before the 
war violated their trust as guardians and armor 
bearers of the Union to betray the nation to its 
conspiring foes. 

*^fr * * -x- * * 



The La7id We Live In, 281 

The conditions at the beginning of the war 
were much more favorable to the South than a 
mere comparison of population would indicate. 
The loyal States had a population of 23,000,000; 
the seceded States 8,000,000, of whom about one- 
half were slaves. These slaves counted, however, 
for about as much effective strength as if they 
had been whites, for the soil had to be cultivated, 
the armies fed, fortifications built and other 
necessary services performed, and the negroes, 
while all who were bright enough to understand 
the situation wished for the success of the Union, 
worked for their masters faithfully, as a rule, 
until the approach of the national armies gave an 
opportunity to escape. Besides, the negroes in 
attendance on the Confederate troops performed 
many duties to which on the Northern side sol- 
diers were assigned, and in this way the blacks 
were useful in*even a strictly military sense. In 
short, the negroes did everything for the Con- 
federacy but fight for it, and this, too, although 
they loved the blue uniform, and gave loyal 
assistance to the Union troops whenever occasion 
offered. The Southern forces, it should also be 
remembered, were on their own ground. They 
knew every thicket and road and stream ; they 
had the sympathy of the white, as well as the 
service of the black inhabitants. They were led 
by a brilliant group of commanders whom Jeffer- 
son Davis, when Secretary of War, had brought 
together probably with this object in view, and 
they were thoroughly armed and equipped at the 
expense of the very government against which 
they were contending. It is needless to say that 
no better soldiers ever bore rifle or sabre than the 
men of the Southern Confederacy. They were, 
like most of their northern antagonists, Ameri- 
cans of the same blood as those who carried the 
redoubts at Yorktown and stormed the hill of 
Chapultepec, and their courage in the Civil War 



282 The Land We Live In. 

fully maintained the prestige gained in battle 
against alien foes. In intelligence, or at least in 
education, however, the rank and file of the Con- 
federate armies were inferior to the native Ameri- 
cans in the Union armies. The Confederate 
troops captured at Vicksburg w'ere no doubt equal 
to the average, and of the 27,000 men then made 
prisoners and paroled two-thirds made their 
marks, not being able to write their names. 
This is not so surprising when it is remembered 
that there was no common school S5^stem in the 
South before the war, and that the "twenty-negro 
law, ' ' exempting the owner of twenty negroes 
from conscription, excused from military service 
the class which had an opportunity to be edu- 
cated, and which also had most at stake in the 
contest. 

Before the close of the war, however, all ex- 
emptions in the Confederacy were virtually swept 
away, and the government enlisted every one able 
to bear a musket, from the boy hardly in his 
teens to the old man tottering to the grave. 
Those not able to go to the front did duty in the 
rear, and the whole male population, excepting 
cripples and children, was in the ranks, or the 
civil service. If any escaped the net of conscrip- 
tion they were likely to be caught in the round- 
up made every now and then after the fashion of 
the old English press-gang, when all who hap- 
pened to be in sight were gathered in, and sent to 
the army, unless they clearly proved a title to 
freedom. In one of these round-ups, sa3's Jones, 
in his "Diary of a Rebel War Clerk" — the Post- 
master-General of the Confederacy, John H. 
Reagan, was carried along with the rest, and 
detained for some time before released. Thus 
the prophecy of Houston was strikingly fulfilled. 
Of course, the refugees and deserters, of whom 
there were a very large number in the swamps 
and woods of the South, are excepted from the 



The Land We Live In. 283 

statement that the whole population was in arms 
for the Confederate cause. 

* -js- * * * * * 

In the beginning of the war the North was at 
a disadvantage. Mr. Lincoln found the little 
army of the United States scattered and dis- 
organized, the navy sent to distant quarters of the 
globe, the treasury bankrupt and the public ser- 
vice demoralized. Floyd and his fellow-con- 
spirators had done their work thoroughly. It 
did not take long for the people of the North to 
rally to the defence of the government, and for 
an army to be formed capable not only of defend- 
ing the loyal States, but of striking a blow at the 
Confederacy. With the National credit restored, 
an abundance of currency provided for national 
needs, and the public departments cleared of 
Southern sympathizers, the North entered upon 
a conflict which could have but one ending 
should the North remain steadfast. 

The weakness of the South, from a military 
standpoint, was in the fact that men lost could 
not be replaced. The North could replenish its 
depleted armies ; the South could not. With 
men therefore of the same race and equal in sol- 
dierly qualities arrayed against each other, one 
side within measurable distance of exhaustion 
and the other with inexhaustible human resources 
to draw upon, the war became an easy sum in 
arithmetic, provided the stronger party should 
not cry ' ' enough ' ' before the weaker had reached 
the exhaustion point. The battles on compara- 
tively equal terms were fought, therefore, in the 
early part of the war, the decisive battles in 1863, 
and the closing struggle between the gasping 
Confederacy and the Union stronger than ever, 
in the last fifteen months of the conflict. 

In the North, notwithstanding the immense 
armies put in the field, there never was a time 
•except in brief periods of riot and disorder, 



284 The Land We Live Ln. 

when the usual bustle of humanity was absent 
from the cities and towns. Commerce and industry 
went on with accustomed activity. While South- 
ern cities looked like garrisoned graveyards the 
North had never worn a busier or more prosperous 
appearance. With such a large population there 
should have been no reason for conscription, but 
when conscription was deemed requisite, there 
ought to have been no exemption on the ground 
of wealth. Every able-bodied drafted man ought 
to have been obliged to serve, without the privi- 
lege of a substitute, and no money payment 
should have secured release from service. The 
obligation to defend the country rests upon all, 
but if there is any distinction, the rich man has 
more interest in protecting the government which 
shields him and his possessions from danger than 
the poor man. European nations make no ex- 
emption on account of wealth or position, and 
the American Republic certainly should not have 
given such an example. 

The people of the North, however, with com- 
paratively few but very troublesome exceptions, 
gave earnest and enthusiastic support to the 
National Government. Committees were formed 
everywhere to aid the armies in the field, to 
provide for the wounded and the sick and to 
assist the families of absent soldiers. In the 
darkest days of the struggle the people never lost 
faith in the ultimate triumph of the Union. 
While statesmen and editors professing to be 
superior to their fellows in knowledge and fore- 
sight saw only the gloomy side and predicted 
the defeat and downfall of the Republic, the 
popular heart was true and confident and coura- 
geous. Upon the people's arms Lincoln could 
always lean in times of severest trial and anxiety, 
assured of comfort, support and strength. 



The Land We Live In. 285 

The unfriendliness of Great Britain and France 
was a most serious and ever-present danger to the 
United States throughout the whole period of the 
war, and was prolific of injury to American inter- 
ests. From the first Great Britain showed a con- 
scious unfriendly purpose. That government 
privately proposed to France, even before Queen 
Victoria's proclamation recognizing the insurgents 
as belligerents, to open direct negotiations with the 
South, and the British Legation at Washington was 
used for secret communications with the Confed- 
erate President. When the Confederate agents, 
James M. Mason and John Slidell and their secre- 
taries, were taken from the British mail-steamer 
Trent by Captain Wilkes, of the American warship 
San Jacinto, the course of the British Cabinet indi- 
cated an unfriendliness so extreme as to approach 
a desire for war. Peremptory instructions were 
sent to Lord Lyons, the British Minister at Wash- 
ington, to demand the release of the men arrested, 
and to leave Washington if the demand was not 
complied with in seven days. Vessels of war 
were fitted out by the British, and troops pressed 
forward to Canada. The official statement of the 
American Minister at London that the act had 
not been authorized by the American Government 
was kept from the British people, and public 
opinion was encouraged to drift into a state of 
hostility toward the United States. The surren- 
der of Mason and Slidell removed all excuse for 
war, much to the disgust, doubtless, of the ruling 
class in Great Britain. Leading English states- 
men made public speeches favoring the Confed- 
eracy. Lord Russell, himself, the Secretary of 
State for Foreign Affairs, stated in the House of 
Lords that the subjugation of the South by the 
North "would prove a calamity to the United 
States and to the world. ' ' The Alabama and 
other privateers went forth from British ports to 
prey on American commerce, and the builder of 



286 The Land We Live Ln. 

the Alabama was cheered in the House of Com- 
mons when he boasted of what he had done. 
Even Mr. Gladstone — before Vicksburg and Get- 
tysburg — declared that "the restoration of the 
American Union by force is unattainable." 

Napoleon the Third — that crow in the eagle's 
nest — was cordially with Great Britain in all 
efforts to injure the American Union. He had 
long cherished the design to establish a vassal 
empire in Mexico, and in our Civil War he saw 
his opportunity. A Southern Confederacy would 
form a grand barrier between a Franco-Mexican 
dominion and the United States, and while the 
French emperor treated the government at Wash- 
ington with diplomatic courtesy, he never ceased 
to exert his influence in favor of the South, so 
far as he could, without an actual rupture. Na- 
poleon was ready and anxious to recognize the 
Confederacy, and he only waited for the South to 
win victories that would give him an excuse for 
action. "His course toward us, " says Bigelow, 
"from the beginning to the end of the plot was 
deliberately and systematically treacherous, and 
his ministers allowed themselves to be made his 
pliant instruments. ' ' * General Grant declared 
at City Point, in 1864, that as soon as we had 
disposed of the Confederates we must begin with 
the Imperialists, and after Appomattox he ex- 
pressed the opinion that the French intervention 
in Mexico was so closely allied to the rebellion 
as to be a part of it. 

Neither England nor France interfered directly 
in behalf of the South. Louis Napoleon waited 
for England to act, and the British Cabinet felt 
that the British masses would not justif}' a war 
in defence of slavery. The American Govern- 
ment, while it met with firm and dignified 
protest Great Britain's disregard of international 



* France and the Confederate Navy. 



The La7id We Live In. 287 

obligations, was careful to abstain from giving 
any excuse for British hostility. "One war at a 
time, ' ' said Abraham Lincoln, in deciding to 
surrender Mason and Slidell. But Americans 
kept careful account of every item of outrage on 
the part of England, and in due time the bill 
was presented — and paid. And in due time also 
Napoleon was told to go out of Mexico — and he 
went. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

The Confederate Government Organized— Fort Sumter — 
President L,incoln Calls for 75 000 Men — Command of the 
Union p-orces Offered to Robert E. Lee— Lee Joins the 
Confederacy— Missouri Saved to the Union— Battle of Bull 
Run — Union Successes in the West — General Grant Cap- 
tures Fort Donelson — "I Have No Terms but Uncon- 
ditional Surrender" — The Monitor and Merrimac Fight — 
Its World-Wide Effect— Grant Victorious at Shiloh— Union 
Naval Victory Near Memphis— That City Captured— Gen- 
eral McClellans Tactics — He Retreats from Victorv at 
Malvern Hill— Second Bull Run Defeat— Great Battle of 
Antietam— Lee Repulsed, but Not Pursued— McClellan 
Superseded by Burnside — Union Defeat at Fredericks- 
burg — Union Victories in the West — Bragg Defeated by 
Rosecrans at Stone River— The Emancipation Proclama- 
tion. 

The new Confederate Government was organ- 
ized at Montgomery, Ala., February 4, 1861, 
by delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, 
Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. 
Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was elected Presi- 
dent and Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, 
Vice-President. The border States, which would 
be the battlefield of war, still hoped for peace, 
and hesitated to yield to the importunities of 
those who had already crossed the Rubicon. In 
Charleston harbor, the American flag floated over 
a little fortress called Sumter, so named after 
the "South Carolina Gamecock" of the Revolu- 
tion, and commanded by Major Robert Anderson. 



288 The Land We Live In. 

In the gray of the morning on April 12, the 
Confederate batteries opened fire on the fort. For 
nearly two days the Stars and Stripes waved de- 
fiantly amid the storm of shot and shell. Then 
further resistance being useless and hopeless, the 
brave garrison evacuated the fort, carrying away 
the flag which they had so resolutely defended. 
Two days later President Lincoln called for 75, 000 
men to put down armed resistance to national 
authority. The North sprang to arms, and from 
Bast and West regiments started on their way to 
Washington. The governors of Arkansas, Ten- 
nessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and 
Missouri declined to obey the call of the Presi- 
dent, and the secession of all these States from 
the Union followed, except Kentucky and Mis- 
souri. On April 17, the Virginia Convention 
passed the Ordinance of Secession. President 
Lincoln had desired to give the command of the 
troops to be called into the field to Colonel Robert 
E. Lee, of the First United States Cavalry, but 
that officer declined to accept the offer, resigned 
his commission, and joined the Confederacy. It 
should be needless to say that the qualities dis- 
played by Lee, at the head of the Army of 
Northern Virginia, amply justified President 
Lincoln's measure of his capacity. The seat of 
the Confederate Government was removed from 
Montgomery to Richmond, and the latter city 
was thenceforward the headquarters of the 
rebellion. 

Of the other border States Maryland remained 
in the Union, and Kentucky, after an attempt to 
maintain an impossible neutrality, yielded to the 
influence of mountain air, and espoused the cause 
of freedom. Missouri's disloyal government 
sought to drag the State into secession, but 
Francis Preston Blair, a lawyer of St. Louis, and 
Captain Nathaniel Lyon, commandant of the 
United States Arsenal in that city, took vigorous 



The Land We Live In. 289 

action against the rebel sympathizers, and saved 
the State to the Union. The German element in 
Missouri was so loyal to the old flag that "Union- 
ist" and "Dutchman" were synonymous terms 
in that region during the war. Captain Lyon, 
promoted to brigadier-general, was defeated and 
killed at the battle of Wilson Creek. It is be- 
lieved that he resolved to win the battle or 
die. Of such stuff were the men who rescued the 
Southwest. 

The battle of Bull Run, when General Joseph 
K. Johnston, commanding the Confederates, de- 
feated General McDowell with serious loss, and 
sent the Union army in disorderly retreat toward 
Washington, taught the Northern people that the 
war was not a parade, and that the overthrow of 
the Confederacy would tax all the energies of the 
loyal States. Fortunately, General George H. 
Thomas won an important victory for the Union 
at Mill Spring, Kentucky, in January, 1862, and 
the capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, in 
the following month, by General Ulysses S. Grant, 
aided by Commodore Foote and his gunboats, 
tended to efface the depression caused by defeat 
in Virginia. General Grant's reply to the Con- 
federate General Buckner, when the latter wished 
to make terms for the surrender of Fort Donelson, 
was on every tongue in the North. "I have no 
terms but unconditional surrender. I propose to 
move immediately upon your works, ' ' was a 
message that spoke the man. Nearly sixteen 
thousand prisoners were captured. They belonged 
mostly to the working classes of Missouri, Ten- 
nessee and Arkansas. 

■X- * * -5^ * * * 

John Ericsson's Monitor, in March, 1862, sent 
a thrill of relief and joy through the North by 
its wonderful victory over the Merrimac. The 
Confederates cut down a United States frigate 
at the Norfolk navy yard, and transformed it 

19 



.290 The Land We Live In. 

into an ironclad ram, with a powerful beak. 
This monster they sent against the Union fleet of 
wooden warships in Hampton Roads. Broad- 
sides had no effect on the Merrimac. The float- 
ing fortress attacked the Cumberland, ramming 
that vessel, and breaking a great hole in its side. 
The Cumberland sank with all on board. The 
Congress was driven aground and compelled to 
surrender. Then the monster rested for the 
night, intending to continue its mission of de- 
struction on the morrow. It seemed that not 
only the Union fleet, but the ports and commerce 
of the North would be at the mercy of this novel 
and terrible engine of destruction. The telegraph 
carried the news everywhere, and in dread and 
anxiety the people awaited the fate of another 
day. When morning came at Hampton Roads a 
small nondescript vessel, looking like an oval 
xaft with a turret, interposed between the Merri- 
mac and its prey. It was the Monitor, the in- 
vention of Captain John Ericsson, and it had 
arrived during the night of March 8. The 
Monitor had been constructed at Greenpoint, 
Long Island, and was towed to Hampton Roads 
by steamers. Her turret was a revolving, bomb- 
proof fort, in which were mounted two ii-inch 
Dahlgren guns. As the turret revolved the great 
guns kept up a steady discharge, battering the 
sides of the Merrimac. The latter hurled enor- 
mous masses of iron on the Monitor, but made no 
impression whatever on the little craft, and the 
duel continued until the Merrimac gave up the 
fight, and ran back to shelter at Norfolk. Erics- 
son's praise was on every tongue. The great 
Swedish engineer whose sanity had been ques- 
tioned when he submitted his ideas to the Navy 
Department, not only saved the Union navy from 
destruction, and Northern harbors from devasta- 
tion, but he also revolutionized naval warfare. 
* ^ * * * * * 



The Land We Live In. 291 

Their first line broken in the Southwest, and 
now compeiied to fight within secession territory, 
the Confederates made a stand along a second 
line from Memphis to Chattanooga, their forces 
being massed at Corinth. In the great battle of 
Shiloh (April 6 and 7) 100,000 men were engaged; 
the National loss in killed, wounded and pris- 
oners was about 15,000, and that of the Confed- 
erates over 10,000. The latter fought more 
desperately than on any previous field, and for a 
time they had the advantage. The usual ethics 
of defeat had, however, no place in General 
Grant's military education, and the enemy were 
at length forced to give way. General Albert 
Sydney Johnston, one of the ablest Confederate 
commanders, was killed, and General Beauregard 
retreated, leaving his dead and wounded in Union 
hands. The second line of defence was broken. 
An amusing incident of this battle — if anything 
can be amusing in war — was a message sent by 
General Beauregard to General Grant explaining 
why he had withdrawn his troops. General 
Grant was strongly tempted to assure Beauregard 
that no apologies were necessary. 

The capture of New Orleans in the latter part 
of April, and of Island Number Ten in the same 
month gave the National forces control of the 
Mississippi nearly up to Vicksburg and down to 
Memphis. The Confederate flotilla was defeated 
and destroyed in a sharp engagement by the 
Union river fleet, two miles above Memphis, on 
June 6, the battle occurring in full view of that 
city. It was one of the most dramatic spectacles 
of the war. The combat lasted just one hour and 
three minutes, and as the Union fleet landed at 
Memphis, a number of newsboys sprang on shore 
from the vessels, shouting: "Here's your New 
York Tribune and Herald f'' — before the city 
had been formally surrendered. The Unionists 
received the National troops like brothers, and 



292 The Land We Live Ln. 

one lady brought out from its hiding place in 
her chimney a National flag concealed from the 
beginning of the war. "We found Memphis, 
wrote a correspondent, ' ' as torpid as Syria, where 
Yusef Browne declared that he saw only one man 
exhibit any sign of activity, and he was engaged 
in tumbling from the roof of a house." Salt was 
rubbed into the wounds of the vanquished by the 
military assignment of Albert D. Richardson and 
Col Thomas W. Knox, representatives of the 
Tribune and Herald, to edit the bitterest seces- 
sion newspaper in the town. ^ „ . 

In the East the Union cause made no progress. 
General George B. McClellan, in command of the 
Army of the Potomac, was endeavoring to play the 
part of a Turenne in a field utterly foreign to 
European strategy. Generals Robert E. Lee, Joseph 
E Tohnston and Thomas Jonathan ("Stonewall ) 
Tackson, the three great Confederate commanders 
in Virginia, proved themselves easily the superiors 
of their antagonists in the tactics best fitted for 
American warfare, and but for the stubborn valor 
of the Union soldiers at Fair Oaks and in the 
seven days' battles ending at Malvern Hills the 
Army of the Potomac would probably have been 
destroyed. When Malvern Hills was won by the 
splendid fighting of the National troops without 
any agency of their commander, and when they 
were enthusiastic for a forward movement upon 
Richmond, McClellan consulted his tactical horo- 
scope, and ordered them to retreat just as if they 
had been beaten. The second battle of Bull 
Run, with General John Pope in command on 
the Union side, and Generals Lee, Stonewall 
Tackson and James Longstreet leading the Con- 
federates, stopped short of being as disastrous a 
defeat for the National arms as the first Buu 
Run, but that was all. . . . ^ ^ ..^ 

Lee pushed into Maryland with about 45.ooo 



The Land We Live In. 293 

troops, and encountered McClellan at Antietam, 
on September 17, with 85,000. McClellan was 
' ' cautious, ' ' as usual, but fighting had to be 
done, and the rank and file of the Union forces 
were, as ever, anxious to fight. I^ee was repulsed 
after a fearful conflict, in which about 20,000 
men were killed and wounded. General Joseph 
Hooker, known as ' ' Fighting Joe Hooker, ' ' was 
under McClellan at Antietam, and behaved most 
gallantly. Wounded before noon. Hooker was 
carried from the field. "Had he not been dis- 
abled, ' ' wrote a war correspondent, ' ' he would 
probably have made it a decisive conflict. Real- 
izing that it was one of the world's great days, 
he said : ' I would gladly have compromised with 
the enemy by receiving a mortal wound at night, 
could I have remained at the head of my troops 
until the sun went down. ' ' ' McClellan neglected 
to take advantage of the success achieved at the 
cost of so many brave lives, and Mr. George W. 
Smalley, then of the Tribune, who was on the 
field, is authority for the statement that General 
Hooker was privately requested in behalf of a 
number of Union ofiicers, to assume command 
and follow up the victory. In Hooker's condi- 
tion this was impossible, even had he been in- 
clined to take a step so serious in its possible 
consequences for himself. 

McClellan was superseded in November by 
General Ambrose E. Burnside, who -had distin- 
guished himself at Antietam, as he always did 
in a subordinate command. On December 13, 
General Burnside suffered a fearful defeat at 
Fredericksburg, with a loss of 12,000 men. It 
was one of Lee's most brilliant victories, and on 
the Union side it was a useless sacrifice of life. 
"Lee's position," says General Fitzhugh Lee, 
' ' was strong by nature and was made stronger by 
art. No troops could successfully assail it, and 
no commanding general should have ordered it 



294 'I^f^^ Land We Live In. 

to be done, ' ' * Burnside was superseded by- 
Hooker, and the armies in Virginia did but little 
more until spring. 



After the battle of Shiloh the Confederates 
made Chattanooga, Tenn., the base of their 
operations in the Southwest. General Braxton 
Bragg, who succeeded Beauregard in command 
in that region, invaded Kentucky, and sought 
to drive the inhabitants into the Confeder- 
ate service. A sanguinary battle at Perryville 
resulted in the complete repulse of the Confed- 
erates, who retreated into Tennessee, carrying 
with them a vast quantity of plunder. General 
"William Starke Rosecrans now came to the front 
as a successful Union commander. With Grant's 
left wing he defeated the Confederates at luka, 
September 19, and Corinth, October 3 and 4, 
and as chief of the Army of the Cumberland, 
he fought one of the great battles of the war 
with General Bragg at Murfreesboro, or Stone 
River, December 31 and January 2. Never 
during the four years of conflict did the troops 
on both sides fight more resolutely. The first 
day was rather favorable to the Confederates. 
Little was done on New Year's Day, but on 
January 2 the struggle was renewed more fiercely 
than before. The western armies had caught 
Grant's instinct of never recognizing defeat. 
Charge after charge was made, first by the Con- 
federates, then by the Union troops, and at length 
the Confederate line fell back, and did not charge 
again. At midnight of January 4 Bragg retired 
in the direction of Chattanooga. The killed, 
wounded and missing numbered over 20,000, 
probably about evenly divided. 



*Iyife of General Robert E. lyce. D. Appleton & Co. 



The Land We Live Ln. 295 

The Bmancipation Proclamation, issued b\'- 
President Lincoln on New Year's Day, 1863, was 
in every sense a statesmanlike and justifiable 
measure. It aroused the powerful anti-slavery 
sentiment of England in support of the Union, 
and neutralized Tory sympathy with the Confed- 
eracy ; it strengthened the Union cause at home, 
and it showed that the National Government was 
not afraid to punish, and was resolved to weaken 
its enemies by the confiscation of their property. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

General Grant Invests Vicksburs: — The Confederate Garri- 
son—Scenes in the Beleaguered City— The Surrender — 
Hooker Defeated at Chancellorsville— Death of " Stone- 
wall " Jackson— General Meade Takes Command of the 
Army of the Potomac— Lee Crosses the Potomac— The 
Battle of Gettj\sburg— The First Two Days— The Third 
Day— Pickett's Charge— A Thrilling Spectacle— The Har- 
vest of Death— Lee Defeated— General Thomas, "The 
RockofChickamauga"— " This Position Must Be Held Till 
Night "—General Grant Defeats Bragg at Chattanooga — 
The Decisive Battle of the "West. 

The Confederates made Vicksburg a position 
of marvelous strength. General William Tecum- 
seh Sherman, who had proved his eminent talent 
as a commander under Grant at Shiloh, assaulted 
the bluffs north of the town on December 29, 
1862, and was repulsed. General Grant, with the 
perseverance which he afterward exhibited at 
Richmond, fought battle after battle until he had 
Vicksburg completely invested. Commodore 
David D. Porter, with a formidable fleet, bom- 
barded the stronghold from the river, while 
Grant's kept up a cannonade day and night from 
the land side. General John C. Pemberton had 
about 15,000 effective men out of 30,000 within 
the lines of the beleaguered city. Every day the 
situation grew more intolerable for the besieged. 
Rats were on sale in the market-places with 



296 The Land We Live Ln. 

mule-meat. The people lived in cellars and caves, 
children were born in caves, and it is interesting 
to read in a diary of that fearful time that "the 
churches are a great resort for those that have no 
caves. People fancy that they are not shelled so 
much, and they are substantial and the pews good 
to sleep in. " A woman wished to go through 
the lines to her friends, and on July i an officer 
with a flag of truce carried the request. He came 
back with the statement: "General Grant says 
no human being shall pass out of Vicksburg ; but 
the lady may feel sure danger will soon be over. 
Vicksburg will surrender on the fourth. ' ' A 
Confederate general present when this message 
was received, said: "Vicksburg will not surren- 
der. ' ' But Grant was right. On July 4 silence 
descended upon Vicksburg. The simoon of shot 
and shell was over, and men and women and 
children crawled from their caves into the light 
of day. The river vessels poured in an abundance 
of provisions, and plenty succeeded starvation. 
General Pemljerton surrendered 27,000 men as 
prisoners of war. 

******* 

General Hooker, notwithstanding his un- 
doubted courage, proved no more fortunate than 
his predecessors in command of the Army of the 
Potomac. With 90,000 men he attacked I^ee and 
45,000 men at Chancellorsville, May i to 4. The 
Confederate commander was at his best in this 
fearful four days' struggle. Hooker, says a high 
Confederate authority, had guided his army 
"into the mazes of the Wilderness, and got it so 
mixed and tangled that no chance was aiforded 
for a display of its mettle. ' ' Lee with inferior 
forces managed by consummate strategy to meet 
and overcome Hooker's subordinates in detail. 
Then he prepared for a crushing blow at Hooker 
himself, which the latter escaped by a timely 
retreat. The bombastic Order No. 49 which 



The Land We Live In. 297 

followed this sweeping disaster for the Union arms 
did not deceive either President Lincoln or the 
people, who had once more seen the lives of 
thousands of our gallant troops sacrificed on the 
altar of shoulder-strapped incompetency. The 
killed and wounded in this battle numbered 
about 25,000, of whom more than half were 
Unionists. These figures repeat eloquently that 
real soldiers were waiting for a real general. 
The death of "Stonewall" Jackson at Chancellors- 
ville was in no slight degree a compensation for 
Union losses. 

The tide turned at Gettysburg. General George 
Gordon Meade succeeded Hooker in command of 
the Army of the Potomac. Meade was not a 
brilliant man, but he was a thorough soldier, and 
eminently free from that spirit of envy which 
was the bane of our armies, which had nearly 
driven Grant from the service, and which was 
responsible for the loss of more than one battle. 
Elated by Chancellorsville, Lee determined to 
invade the North. The South made an extreme 
effort to replenish its armies, and that of 
Northern Virginia was raised to about 100,000 
men. With the greater part of this magnificent 
host, including 15,000 cavalry and 280 guns, Lee 
marched down the Shenandoah Valley, crossed 
the Potomac on the twenty-fifth of June, and 
headed for Chambersburg. Meade drew near 
with the army of the Potomac, and such rein- 
forcements as had been hastily collected in Penn- 
sylvania on the news of the invasion. At 
Gettysburg the two armies met for the decisive 
battle of the war. Meade had on the field 83,000 
men and 300 guns; Lee, 69,000 men and 250 
guns. For three days the two armies contended 
with frightful losses, and with a courage not sur- 
passed in ancient or modern warfare. The brave 
General John F. Reynolds lost his life in the first 
encounter, and General Wiufield Scott Hancock 



298 The Land We Live In. 

was sent by Meade to take charge of the field. 
On the second day occurred the desperate conflict 
for lyittle Round Top, which resulted in that key 
to the Union line being seized and held by the 
Union troops. Neither side, however, gained 
any decided advantage. On the third day I^ee 
prepared for the grand movement known in 
history as "Pickett's charge." Fourteen thou- 
sand men were selected as the forlorn hope of 
the Confederacy. For two hours before the 
charge 120 guns kept up a fearful cannonade 
upon the Union lines. Meade answered with 
eighty guns. About three o'clock in the after- 
noon Meade ceased firing. Lee thought the 
Northern gunners were silenced. He was mis- 
taken ; they knew what was coming. 

On moved the charging column, as the smoke 
of battle lifted, and the "tattered uniforms and 
bright muskets" came plainly into view., At an 
average distance of about eleven hundred yards 
the Union batteries opened. Shot and shell tore 
through the Confederate ranks. Still they 
marched on over wounded and dying and dead. 
Canister now rained on their flanks, and as they 
came within closer range a hurricane of bullets 
burst upon them, and men dropped on every side 
like leaves in the winds of autumn. The strength 
of the charging column melted before the gale of 
death ; but the survivors staggered on. When 
the remains of the Confederate right reached the 
Union works their three brigade commanders had 
fallen, every field officer except one had been 
killed or wounded ; but still the remnant kept its 
face to the foe, led to annihilation by the daunt- 
less Armistead. The four brigades on the left of 
Pickett met a similar fate. "They moved up 
splendidly," wrote a Union officer, "deploying 
as they crossed the long sloping interval. The 
front of the column was nearly up the slope, and 
within a few yards of the Second Corps' front 



The Land We Live In. 299 

and its batteries, when suddenly a terrific fire 
from every available gun on Cemetery Ridge 
burst upon them. Their graceful lines under- 
went an instantaneous transformation in a dense 
cloud of smoke and dust; arms, heads, blankets, 
guns and knapsacks were tossed in the air, and 
the moan from the battlefield was heard amid the 
storm of battle. ' ' 

One half of the 14,000 perished in the charge. 
Gettysburg was over, and the tide of invasion 
from the South was rolled back never to return. 
Meade had lost about 23,000 men, and Lee about 
^,000. Halleck, whose business as general-in- 
chief seemed to be to annoy successful com- 
manders, and irritate them to the resignation 
point, blamed Meade for allowing Lee to retire 
without another battle, but public opinion upheld 
the victor of Gettysburg, and Congress honored 
him and Generals Hancock and O. O. Howard 
with a resolution of thanks. 

* * * * -Sf * * 

General George H. Thomas, a Southern ofiicer 
of the Lee and Johnston rank in military 
capacity, who fortunately stood by the Union, 
saved Chickamauga from being a Union defeat 
that would have done much to offset Gettysburg 
and Vicksburg. Rosecrans had compelled Bragg 
to evacuate Chattanooga, and erroneously assumed 
that the Confederate commander was in retreat, 
when in fact he had been reinforced by Long- 
street and was ready to risk another battle. The 
two armies met in the valley of Chickamauga. 
Operations on the Union side were chiefly a 
series of blunders which resulted in the right 
wing of Rosecrans' army being broken and driven 
from the field, leaving the brunt of the conflict 
to be borne by General Thomas with the left 
wing. 

The magnificent stand made by Thomas 
against the victorious Confederates, gained for 



300 The Land We Live In. 

him the title of the "Rock of Chickamauga. '* 
Surrounded on all sides by a force that a craven 
commander might have deemed irresistible, 
Thomas thought out his plans as coolly as if 
miles away from danger, "Take that ridge!" 
he said calmly to General James B. Steedman, 
when that fearless soldier came up with his 
division ; and Thomas pointed to a commanding 
ridge held by the enemy. Steedman moved at 
once to the attack, and the ridge was carried 
with a loss of 2900 men. In vain both wings of 
the Confederates were hurled, with fierce deter- 
mination against the little army of Thomas. 
With 25,000 men he successfully resisted the at- 
tacks of between 50,000 and 60,000. "It will 
ruin the army to withdraw it now ; this position 
must be held till night" — was the answer of 
Thomas to Rosecrans ; and Thomas held the posi- 
tion until night, and then withdrew in good 
order. The Union loss was about 19,000 and that 
of the Confederates at least as great. Thomas in 
the following month succeeded Rosecrans as com- 
mander of the Army of the Cumberland. It is 
more than probable that up to that time his 
merits had not been fully recognized, owing to 
unfounded suspicion of his loyalty. "When it 
was said of Thomas to General Joseph K. Johnston 
that he ' ' did not know when he was whipped, ' ' 
Johnston answered : ' ' Rather say he always knew 
very well when he was not whipped. ' ' 

The Army of the Tennessee, now commanded 
by Sherman, was brought up to Chattanooga from 
Vicksburg, and General Grant was placed in 
command of all forces west of the Alleghenies. 
General Hooker was sent from Virginia with 
reinforcements, and General Grant prepared for 
the decisive battle of the West. In that battle, 
which was fought about Chattanooga, November 
24 and 25, Bragg was completely defeated with a 
loss of about 3000 in killed and wounded and 6000 



The Land We Live Ift. 301 

prisoners. A remarkable feature of this battle is 
that the Confederate position on Missionary Ridge 
was carried by a charge made by the Union troops 
without orders from their commanders. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Grant Appointed Ivieutenant-General— Takes Command in" 
Virginia— Battles of the Wilderness— The Two Armies- 
Battle of Cedar Creek— Sheridan's Ride— He Turns Defeat 
Into Victory — Confederate Disasters on L,and and Sea — 
Farragut at Mobile — L,ast Naval Battle of the War— Sher- 
man Enters Atlanta — Lincoln's Re-election— Sherman's 
March to the Sea— Sherman Captures Savannah— Thomas 

\ Defeats Hood at Nashville — Fort Fisher Taken— I^ee Ap- 
pointed General-in-chief— Confederate Defeat at Five 
Forks— L,ee's Surrender— Johnston's Surrender — Knd of 
the War — The South Prostrate — A Resistance Unparalleled 
in History — The Blots on the Confederacy— Cruel Treat- 
ment of Union Men and Prisoners— Murder of Abrahams 
Lincoln — The South Since the War. 

The Confederacy having been dismantled in 
the Southwest — except in Texas, where secession 
simply awaited the result in other States — Vir- 
ginia became the central battle-ground of the 
rebellion. There its chief energies were concen- 
trated for the closing struggle, and there its 
greatest leader commanded. It was the part of 
wisdom, therefore, for the National Government 
to make its most successful general chief of all 
the National armies, with the understanding that 
he would personally direct operations in the most 
important field. Grant was appointed lieutenant- 
general in March, 1864, and he at once gave his 
attention to the Army of the Potomac, which 
Meade continued to command under his supervi- 
sion. The Army of Northern Virignia was no 
longer the well-equipped host which had gained 
victory after victory in the earlier period of the 
war, but its spirit was undaunted, and Lee, as 
his resources diminished, displayed more signally 



302 The Latid We Live In. 

than ever his remarkable military genius. The 
two great commanders were face to face, but not 
on the equal terms that in '62 or '63 w^ould have 
presented a duel of giants. The Confederacy was 
falling, gradually, it is true, but the end was in 
sight. It was virtually confined to four States, 
Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, and these 
but shells that only needed Sherman's march to 
the sea to prove how hollow they were. General 
Grant fought his way through the battles of the 
Wilderness, Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor, and 
across the James River to Petersburg. His losses 
of men were enormous, but the strength of his 
army was maintained by a continuous supply of 
recruits from the North. Grant established his 
lines in front of Petersburg, and proceeded to 
reduce that place. He gave Lee no rest, and ex- 
hausted the Confederates with repeated surprises 
and attacks. 

General Lee had about 50,000 men to de- 
fend two cities and a line of intrenchments en- 
veloping both, thirty-five miles long, against 
about 150,000 men, a large proportion of them 
veterans, trained and steeled to war. The time 
had passed for offensive operations on any effec- 
tive scale on the part of the Confederates, al- 
though a desperate dash now and then gave a false 
impression to the world outside that the Con- 
federacy still had a vigorous vitality. While 
General Philip H. Sheridan, Chief of Cavalry of 
the Army of the Potomac, was at Winchester, 
October 19, General Jubal Early suddenly attacked 
Sheridan's forces at Cedar Creek, nearly twenty 
miles from Winchester. The attack was made at 
dawn, and proved a complete surprise. The Na- 
tional troops were defeated, and the roads were 
thronged with fugitives, while camp, and cannon 
and a large number of prisoners fell into the 
hands of the enemy. Sheridan was riding 
leisurely out of Winchester, when he met his 



The Land We Live Ln. 303 

routed troops. At once he dashed forward on his 
black charger, crying out to his men : "Face the 
other way, boys ! Face the other way ! ' ' and, as 
he learned the extent of the disaster, he added : 
"We will have all the camps and cannon back 
again!" With courage revived by their leader's 
example, the Union troops rallied and turned 
upon the foe, recovering all the spoil, and virtu- 
ally destroying Earl3-'s army. 

Disaster attended the Confederate cause on land 
and sea. The British cruiser Alabama, flying the 
Confederate flag, was defeated and sunk by the 
United States frigate Kearsarge, off the coast of 
France, in June, 1864. Admiral David Glasgow 
Farragut entered Mobile Bay, August 5, lashed to 
the mast of his flagship, the Hartford, and fought 
the last naval battle of the war. The monitor 
Tecumseh, which led the National vessels, was 
struck by the explosion of a torpedo, and sank 
with Commander Craven and nearly all her 
officers and men. Farragut, unshaken by this 
disaster, ordered the Hartford to go ahead heed- 
less of torpedoes, and the other vessels to follow. 
He silenced the batteries with grapeshot, destroyed 
the Confederate squadron, and on the following 
day captured the forts with the assistance of a 
land force of 5000 men from New Orleans. The 
impatience of the Richmond government, chafing 
under its own impotence, hastened the catas- 
trophe. General Joseph E. Johnston, who had 
succeeded Bragg, and who husbanded as far as 
compatible with an efficient defence the troops 
under his command, was removed to give 
way to General John B. Hood, who was will- 
ing to waste his forces in hopeless conflict 
with Sherman. On September 2 Sherman entered 
Atlanta. 

The news of Lincoln's re-election by 212 
electoral votes to 21 for McClellan, put an 



304 The La7id We Live In. 

end to Confederate reliance on Northern sym- 
pathy and aid. Even the most sanguine now 
lost hope. 

* it -jt -x- * * ^t 

After sending a part of his army under Thomas 
to cope with Hood, who had moved into middle 
Tennessee, Sherman started about the middle of 
November with 60,000 men on his famous march 
through Georgia to the seacoast. He destroyed 
the railroads, and devastated the country from 
which the Confederacy was drawing its supplies. 
Although I have never seen it mentioned in any 
publication regarding the war, I believe that pre- 
vious to Sherman's march it was the purpose of 
the Confederate Government to retreat to North 
Carolina when too hardly pressed in Virginia. 
Otherwise there seems to be no explanation for 
the vast accumulation of provisions at Salisbury, 
which were certainly not intended or used for the 
Union prisoners at that place, and for the large 
stores of food at Charlotte. Sherman captured 
Savannah just before Christmas, and proceeded 
northward through the Carolinas. Meancime 
General Thomas had completely defeated Hood at 
the battle of Nashville, and dispersed his army, 
the remnant of which gathered again under Gen- 
eral Joseph E. Johnston to oppose the march of 
Sherman. Fort Fisher, North Carolina, surrendered 
to General Alfred H. Terry and Admiral Porter in 
January, 1865. 

* * -X- * * -5^ * 

Lee, reduced to the last extremity at Richmond, 
and appointed in February, 1865, general-in-chief 
of armies which no longer had a real existence, 
decided to abandon the Confederate capital and 
effect a junction with Johnston. Sheridan pre- 
vented this by defeating the Confederates at Five 
Forks, April i, and turning Lee's right and 
threatening his rear. Five Forks was the begin- 
ning of the end. Thirty -five thousand muskets 






The Land We Live In. 305 

were guarding thirty-seven miles of intrench- 
ments, and on these attenuated lines General 
Grant ordered an immediate assault. The de- 
fences were found to be almost denuded of men. 
Petersburg and Richmond fell, and Lee, driven 
westward, surrendered at Appomattox, on April 9, 
the remains of the once proud Army of Northern 
Virginia, now numbering 26,000 ragged and 
starving soldiers. On learning that Lee's troops 
had been living for days on parched corn. General 
Grant at once offered to send them rations, and 
the Union soldiers readily shared their own pro- 
visions with the men with whom, a few hours 
before, they had been engaged in mortal strife. 
Lee bade a touching farewell to his troops, and 
rode through a weeping army to his home in 
Richmond. A fortnight afterward Johnston sur- 
rendered to Sherman, and with the surrender of 
the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Army, May 26, 
the war was at an end. The Confederate Govern- 
ment had fled from Richmond when Lee with- 
drew his army, and on May 10, Jefferson Davis 
was captured near Irwinsville, Ga. , and sent as a 
prisoner to Fortress Monroe. 

* * ^t * •?«■ * -St 

We have read of the sieges of Numantia and of 
Haarlem, of Scotland's struggle for liberty under 
Wallace and Bruce, and of the virtual extinction 
of the men of Paraguay in the war against Brazil 
and Argentina ; but history records no resistance 
on the part of a considerable population inhabit- 
ing an extensive region, under an organized 
government, worthy to compare in resolution, 
endurance and self-sacrifice, with that of the 
Southern Confederacy to the forces of the Union. 
When the war closed the South was prostrate 
When the Governor of Alabama was asked to join 
in raising a force to attack the rear of Sherman 
he answered, no doubt truthfully, that only 
cripples, old men and children remained of the 
20 



3o6 The Land We Live In. 

male population of the State. In their despera- 
tion the Southern leaders even thought of enlist- 
ing negroes, thus adding a grotesque epilogue to 
the mighty national tragedy. Of course even 
the most ignorant negro could not have been 
expected to fight for his own enslavement. I 
saw Richmond about a month before the surren- 
der. It was like a city of the dead. Two weeks 
later I was in New York. It teemed with life 
and bustle and energy. 

The blots on the Confederacy were the cruel 
persecution of Union men living in the South, 
who were, in many instances, dragged from their 
families and put to death as traitors, and the 
maltreatment of Union prisoners. The North 
tolerated Southern sympathizers, when not 
actually engaged in plotting against the govern- 
ment, and treated Southern prisoners with all 
the kindness possible. It has been said for the 
South that while Union prisoners were starving, 
the Confederate troops in the field were almost 
starving too. This is a dishonest subterfuge. 
The Southern troops were starving not because 
ordinary food was not plentiful in the Confed- 
eracy, but because of lack of transportation to 
carry the food from the interior to the front, 
while the Union prisoners perished from hunger 
in the midst of abundance. Again, even assum- 
ing the plea of scarcity to be true, that would 
not palliate the numerous murders of helpless 
prisoners by volleys fired into the stockades at 
the pleasure of the guards,* There was a vindic- 
tiveness in these crimes which no plea can 
extenuate. 

* ^ * * * * * 

The murder of Abraham Lincoln by John 
Wilkes Booth removed the only man who could 



* As one of the survivors of the massacre of November 25, 
1864, at Salisbury, North Carolina, I know whereof I speak. 



The Land We Live In. 307 

have done justice to the South and controlled the 
passions of the North. Lincoln was signally, 
providentially adapted to be the nation's guide 
in the struggle which, under his leadership, was 
brought to a successful conclusion. For the 
equally difficult task of reconstruction he was 
likewise admirably qualified, and his death was 
followed by a civil chaos almost as deplorable as 
armed disunion. From that chaos the Ameri- 
can people gradually emerged by force of their 
native character and their fundamental sense of 
justice and of right. The South, for some years 
subjected to the rule of camp-followers and freed- 
men, gradually recovered from the devastation of 
war, and superior intelligence came to the top, as 
it always will eventually. The Southern people 
learned that they had other resources besides 
cotton, and they began to emulate the North in 
the development of manufactures and mines. 
The old slave-owning aristocracy in the South 
has disappeared, but the "poor whites" have also 
almost disappeared, and the average of comfort 
in that section is greater than at any period in 
American history. The negroes complain, and 
with too much cause, of political oppression and 
exclusion from the suffrage, but they seem to be 
on good terms with their "oppressors," and on 
the principle of the old Spanish proverb that 
"he is my friend who brings grist to my mill," 
the Southern black has no better friend than the 
Southern white. 



3o8 The Land We Live In. 

Thirty Years of Peace. 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Reconstruction in the South— The Congress and the Presi- 
dent—Liberal Republican Movement— Nomination, Defeat 
and Death of Greeley— Troops Withdrawn by President 
Hayes— Foreign Policy of the Past Thirty Years— French 
Ordered from Mexico— I^ast Days of Maximilian— Russian- 
America Bought — The Geneva Arbitration — Alabama 
Claims Paid— The Northwest Boundary — The Fisheries — 
Spain and the Virginius— The Custer Massacre— United 
States of Brazil Established — President Harrison and 
Chile — Venezuela— American Prestige in South America — 
Hawaii— BehringSea— Garfield, the Martyr of Civil Service 
Reform— Labor Troubles — Railway Riots of 1877 and 
1894— Great Calamities— The Chicago Fire, Boston Fire, 
Charleston Earthquake, Johnstown Flood. 

The Southern people cannot be justly blamed 
for their resolute resistance to negro domination. 
It was too much to expect that former masters 
should accept political inferiority to a race eman- 
cipated from slavery, but not emancipated from 
deplorable ignorance and debasement, and easily 
misled by unscrupulous whites. On the other 
hand, gratitude and prudence demanded, on the 
part of the North, that the negro should not only 
be a freeman, but also a citizen ; that he should 
not only be liberated from slavery, but also pro- 
tected against oppression. The negro, however 
ignorant, was true to the Union, and attached to 
the Republican party ; the black soldiers had 
fought in the Union armies, and Abraham Ivincoln 
himself had advised Governor Hahn, of Louis- 
iana, in 1863, that "the very intelligent colored 
people, and especially those who fought gallantly 
in our ranks, should be admitted to the fran- 
chise, " for "they would probably help in some 
trying time to come to keep the jewel of liberty 
within the family of freedom. ' ' 

Andrew Johnson, succeeding to the chair of 



The Land We Live hi. 309 

Ivincoln, and with his heart softened toward his 
native South, would have restored the whites to 
full control, with the negroes at their mercy. 
The Congress, however, intervened, and the ex- 
Confederate States were placed under military 
law, and only admitted to recognition as States 
upon conditions which gave the negro equal 
rights with his white fellow-citizens — and indeed 
superior rights to many of them, the Fourteenth 
Amendment to the Constitution of the United 
-States excluding from office all persons who, hav- 
ing taken an oath as public officers to support the 
Constitution afterward joined the Confederacy. 
For opposing these measures of Congress Presi- 
dent Johnson was impeached, and escaped con- 
-viction by one vote. 

•X- -X- 4fr ^ ^ * -x- 

The Southern whites continued to struggle for 
white supremacy. The conflict continued 
throughout Johnson's term as President, and 
€ven the severe military measures adopted under 
power from Congress by General Grant, only 
suppressed organized violence in its more ram- 
pant form. It was impossible to imprison a com- 
monwealth or to place bayonets at every threshold, 
and while the negro might be upheld in his right 
of suffrage, Federal protection could not supply 
him with work and bread. The intellect and 
the property of the South were on the side of the 
whites, and the blacks began to find that their 
choice was between submission or extinction. 

In the North, even among Republicans, a feel- 
ing grew that the ex-Confederates had suffered 
enough, while it was impossible for an honest 
man to have any other sentiment than contempt 
for the political vultures who had descended on 
the wasted South. This feeling gave strength to 
the Liberal Republican movement in 1872, and 
arrayed Democrats — and not a few of the old anti- 
slavery leaders — in support of Horace Greeley for 
President. 



3IO The Land We Live Ln. 

The insanity and death of Mr. Greeley cast a 
gloom over the election for victors as well as van- 
quished. Mr. Greeley's mind was weakened by 
domestic affliction, and by the desertion of Tri- 
bune readers, and when crushing defeat at the 
polls gave the conp-de-grace to his political pros- 
pects, his once vigorous intellect yielded under 
the strain. Like a dying gladiator, mortally 
wounded, but with courage unquenched, he seized 
once more the editorial blade with which he had 
dealt so many powerful blows in the past for 
justice and for truth ; but nature was not equal to 
the task, and the weapon fell from his nerveless 
grasp. His last words were: "The country is 
gone; the Tribune is gone, and I am gone." 
General Grant attended the funeral of his gifted 
and hapless competitor, and the nation joined in 
honor and eulogy of the great editor whose heart 
was always true to humanity, and whose very 
failings leaned to virtue's side. Fortunately Mr. 
Greeley's irresponsible utterance was not prophetic 
either as to the country or the Tribune. Mr. 
Whitelaw Reid succeeded to the editorial chair, 
and has ably kept the Tribune in the front 
rank of American journals. 



Mr. Greeley's last editorial expression pleaded 
with the victors in behalf of justice and fair 
dealing for the South. General Grant himself is 
said to have arrived at the conclusion before the 
close of his second term, that the Federal troops 
should be withdrawn from the Southern States, 
and sagacious Republicans discerned in the 
growth of Democratic sentiment both North and 
South a warning that the people were becoming 
tired of bayonet government ten years after Ap- 
pomattox. The election of 1876, when the De- 
mocrats had a popular majority, and the decision 
between Rutherford B. Hayes, Republican, and 



The Land We Live In. 311 

Samuel J. Tilden, Democrat, depended on a 
single vote, emphasized the popular protest 
against military rule in time of peace, and when 
the Electoral Commission gave a verdict in favor 
of General Hayes, the new President speedily 
withdrew the National troops from the recon- 
structed States. 



While the country witnessed deep agitation 
and difference of opinion regarding reconstruc- 
tion in the South, there was no diiTerence of public 
sentiment regarding the vigorous, far-sighted 
and thoroughly American policy of the gov- 
ernment in dealing with foreign powers. One of 
the first steps of Secretary Seward after the close 
of the war was to demand in courteous language 
that the French should evacuate Mexico. Napo- 
leon dared not challenge the United States by 
answering no. General Philip H. Sheridan was 
on the Rio Grande with fifty thousand men, 
anxious to cross over and fight; a million veterans 
were ready to obey the summons to battle, and 
Generals Grant and Sherman would willingly have 
followed in the footsteps of Scott and Taylor. 
The French troops were withdrawn. Maximilian, 
deceived as to the strength of his cause with the 
natives, refused to accompany Bazaine across the 
ocean, and the month of May, 1867, saw the 
usurping emperor shut up with a small force in 
Queretaro, surrounded by an army of forty thou- 
sand Mexican avengers. 

In those final days of his life and reign the 
hapless Austrian prince exhibited a courage and 
nobility of character which showed that the blood 
of Maria Theresa w^as not degenerate in his veins. 
He faced death with more than reckless daring; 
he shared in all the privations of his faithful 
adherents, and he was preparing to cut his way 
out through the host of besiegers, at the head of 



312 The Land We Live In. 

his men, when treachery betrayed him to the 
enemy. 

Miguel Lopez was the Benedict Arnold of 
Queretaro ; personal immunity and two thousand 
gold ounces the price. Lopez held the key of 
Queretaro — the convent of La Cruz. Maximilian 
had been his generous patron and friend, and had 
appointed him chief of the imperial guard. 
Lopez discerned the approaching downfall of his 
sovereign, and resolved to save himself by de- 
livering up that sovereign to the enemy. On the 
night of May 14, the Liberal troops were admitted 
to La Cruz, and Queretaro was at the mercy of 
the besiegers. 

Maximilian made a last stand on the "Hill of 
the Bells. ' ' Successful resistance was impossible. 
The bullet he prayed for did not come, and the 
emperor and his officers were prisoners. In vain 
the Princess Salm-Salm, representing one of the 
proudest families of Europe, bent her knees be- 
fore the Indian President of Mexico, and pleaded 
for the life of Maximilian, "I am grieved, 
madam," said Juarez, "to see you thus on your 
knees before me ; but if all the kings and queens 
of Kurope were in your place, I could not spare 
that life. It is not I who take it. It is the 
people and the law, and if I should not do their 
will, the people would take it, and mine also, ' ' 

"Boys, aim well — aim at my heart" — was 
Maximilian's request to his executioners, "Ob 
man!" was his last cry as he fell, the victim of 
his own ambition, and of Louis Napoleon's per- 
fidy. The volley which pierced his breast was 
the knell of the Bonaparte dynasty, Gravelotte 
was but little more than three years from 

Queretaro, 

•Jfr ^ * -x- ^ -x- * 

The acquisition of Russian America for the 
sum of f7, 200, 000 was a splendid stroke of states- 
manship, and secured to the United States the 



The Land We Live I71. 313 

control of the North Pacific coast of the con- 
tinent, besides adding about 581, 107 square miles 
to the territory of the Republic. Alaska has im- 
mense resources, and is already looking forward 
to a proud and prosperous future as the north 
star in the flag of our Union. 



When the British Government proposed, in 
1871, a joint commission to settle the Canadian 
fisheries dispute, Secretary of State Hamilton 
Fish replied that the settlement of the claims 
for depredations by Anglo-Confederate cruisers 
would be ' ' essential to the restoration of cordial 
and amicable relations between the two govern- 
ments. ' ' In the following February five high 
commissioners from each country met in Wash- 
ington, and a treaty was agreed upon providing 
for arbitration upon the issues between the 
American Republic and Great Britain. These 
issues included the "Alabama Claims" — so-called 
because the Alabama was the most notorious and 
destructive of the Anglo-Confederate sea rovers — 
the question of the Northwest boundary, and the 
Canadian fisheries. 

The Tribunal of Arbitration upon the ' * Alabama 
Claims" met at Geneva, Switzerland, December 
15, 1871. Charles Francis Adams, American 
Minister to England during the war, was member 
of the Tribunal for the United States, and Lord 
Chief Justice Cockburn acted for Great Britain. 
Baron Itajuba, Brazilian Minister to France; 
Count Sclopis, an Italian statesman, and M. Jaques 
Staempfli, of Switzerland, were the other mem- 
bers of the illustrious and memorable court. 
Caleb Cushing, William M. Bvarts and Morrison 
R. Waite, counsel for the United States, presented 
an indictment against England which should 
have made British statesmen shrink from the 
evidence of their unsuccessful conspiracy against 



314 The Land We Live In. 

the life of a friendly State. The course of Great 
Britain during the war was reviewed in language 
not less forcible and convincing because it was 
calm, dignified and restrained. A fortress of 
facts was presented impregnable to British reply, 
and highly creditable to the forethought and skill 
with which the American State Department had 
gathered the material for its case from the very 
beginning of the war. So strong and unanswer- 
able was the proof against the Alabama that the 
British arbitrator voted in favor of the United 
States on the issue of British responsibility for 
that vessel. 

The Tribunal awarded 1 15, 500, coo in gold for 
the vessels and cargoes destroyed by the Alabama, 
with her tender; the Florida, with her three 
tenders, and the Shenandoah, or Sea King, during 
a jjart of her piratical career. England jjromptly 
paid the award, and learned for the third time 
in her history that the rights and interests of the 
American people were not to be trampled on with 
impunity. The United States, in fulfilment of 
an award made by a commission appointed under 
the Treaty of Washington paid |2, 000, 000 for 
damages incurred by British subjects during 
the war for the Union, the claims presented to 
the commission having amounted to f 96, 000, 000. 
The differences between the United States and 
Great Britain on account of the rebellion were 
thus happily removed without the shedding of a 
drop of blood, and the two great nations of Eng- 
lish origin gave to mankind an admirable example 
of peaceful arbitration as a substitute for the 
ordeal of battle. 



The question of the Northwest boundary was 
also settled to the satisfaction of the United 
States, by the German emperor, William I., to 
whom it was referred as arbitrator. The treaty 



The Land We Live In. 315 

of 1846 left in doubt whether the boundary line 
included the island of San Juan and its group 
within American or British territory. American 
and British garrisons occupied the disputed island 
of San Juan. When the Emperor William decided 
in favor of the United States the British troops 
were withdrawn. 

Less advantageous to the United States was the 
attempt made to settle the long dispute over the 
fisheries. The Treaty of Washington provided 
that American fishermen should be freely admitted 
to the Canadian fisheries, and that Canadians 
should be permitted to fish on the American coast 
as far south as the thirty-ninth parallel, and that 
there should be free trade in fish-oil and salt water 
fish, these provisions to be abrogated on two years' 
notice. Through a most unfortunate blunder on 
the part of our government a commission was 
constituted virtually British in its character, 
which awarded to Great Britain the sum of 
$5> 500)000 for imaginary American benefits to be 
derived from reciprocity. This money was paid 
without any real equivalent. 

The reciprocity arrangement was abrogated, 
under notice from our government, in 1885, and 
the old contention was renewed. As a result of 
Canadian outrage and intolerance a bill was 
passed by the American Congress, March 3, 1887, 
providing that the President, on being satisfied 
that American fishing masters or crews were 
treated in Canadian ports any less favorably than 
masters or crews of trading vessels belonging to 
the most favored nations could "in his discretion 
by proclamation to that effect deny vessels, their 
masters and crews, of the British dominions of 
North America, any entrance into the waters, 
ports or places of or within the United States. " 
Bventually the Canadians assumed a more reason- 
able attitude, and American fishermen, on their 
part, learned to be independent of Canada, and 



3i6 The Land We Live Ln. 

to value the exclusive possession of their own 
markets more than Canadian fishing privileges. 

* -St -Sf -X- * * -Jfr 

Spain invited a conflict with the United States 
by the summary execution, in November, 1873, 
of no persons, including a number of American 
citizens, captured on the American steamship 
Virginius, while on their way to assist the Cuban 
patriots. President Grant acted with firmness 
and deliberation, refusing to be carried away by 
the popular demand for war, but resolute in his 
demand for redress on the part of Spain. The 
Spanish government surrendered the survivors 
and the Virginius, and made reparation satis- 
factory to the United States. When the Ameri- 
can schooner Competitor was captured recently, 
on an errand to the Cuban insurgents, the Span- 
iards did not dare to repeat the tragedy of the 
Virginius. 



The American Indians made their last hostile 
stand against white aggression June 25, 1876, 
when the Sioux, led by Sitting Bull, destroyed 
General Custer and three hundred cavalry under 
his command. The troops fought bravely, but 
the Indians were nerved to desperation by the 
presence of their women and children. Sitting 
Bull took refuge with his followers in British 
territory, but surrendered to United States author- 
ity in 1880, under promise of amnesty. He was 
treacherously killed in 1890, on suspicion of 
being concerned in fomenting trouble with the 
whites. The policy of the National Government 
toward the Indians has of late years been humane 
and liberal. 

* * -X- -X- -X- ■)(■ * 

The extinction of imperialism in Brazil in 1889 
effaced monarchy from the American continent, 



The La7id We Live In. 317 

save as represented in the territories still subject 
to European States. Dom Pedro II., one of the 
most amiable and liberal of nineteenth century- 
rulers, was driven into exile, and without an 
armed encounter, or the firing of a gun in anger, 
the empire of Brazil became the United States of 
Brazil. Unlike other emperors and kings who 
have been compelled to give up their American 
dominions, Dom Pedro's parting message to the 
land he had wisely governed was one of amity 
and peace. As the shores of his loved Brazil 
disappeared before his moistening eyes he re- 
leased a dove to bear back his last adieu of loyal 
and fervent good will. He died in exile, his end 
doubtless hastened by pathetic longing to see 
once more the native land forever barred to 
him. 

The path toward freedom in Brazil had not been 
strewn with flowers. Brazil had its martyrs as 
well as its heroes. It is a remarkable fact that 
nearly every revolution in France had its echo in 
Brazil, and undoubtedly French as well as Ameri- 
can example had much to do with the deposition 
of Pedro II. It is a mistake to argue, as some 
European writers have argued, that the change 
from a monarchy to a republic in Brazil was 
nothing more than a successful military revolt. 
It was the culmination of more than a century of 
agitation in behalf of republican principles; it 
was the pure flame of a sacred hearth -fire, which 
had never been extinguished from the day when 
it caught the first feeble glow from the dying 
breath of Filipe dos Santos. 

The Brazilians have given an admirable exam- 
ple to other South American republics in the sep- 
aration of State from Church. While providing for 
the maintenance of ecclesiastics now dependent 
on the State for support, the Brazilian Constitu- 
tion decrees not only entire liberty of worship, 
but absolute equality of all before the law, without 



3i8 The La7id We Live In. 

regard to their religious creed. The absence of 
this equality is the chief blot on some South 
American States. 



The resolute course of President Harrison in 
exacting indemnity and apology from Chile for 
insult to the American uniform and the murder 
and wounding of American sailors, tended greatly 
to promote the influence and prestige of the 
United States in South America, and the Spanish- 
American republics are learning to esteem the 
United States, instead of England, as the leading 
power of the New World. Brazil is grateful for 
American countenance and friendship in the de- 
fence of that youngest and greatest of South 
American republics against rebellion plotted in 
Europe in the interest of the Braganzas, while 
Venezuela depends upon the United States with 
justifiable confidence for the vindication of the 
Monroe Doctrine, and the restoration of territory 
seized and occupied by the British without any 
title save that of superior force. Cuba, in her 
heroic battle for freedom, is upheld by American 
public sentiment and the substantial sympathy of 
the American people, and Nicaragua is virtually 
under American protection. The American eagle, 
from its seat in the North, overshadows with 
guardian pinions the American continent. 



In the case of Hawaii the American Republic 
seems likely to depart from its traditional policy 
of acquiring no territory beyond American 
bounds. The Hawaiian Islands were won from 
barbarism by the efforts and sacrifices of Ameri- 
can missionaries and their descendants. A re- 
public has been established there, and intelligent 
Hawaiians look hopefully forward to a common 
future with the United States. There is hardly a 



The Land We Live In. 319 

doubt that this hope will be fulfilled, and that 
the Eden of Southern seas will become an outpost 
of American civilization. With the two great 
English speaking nations of America and Aus- 
tralia confronting each other across the Pacific, 
that ocean is certain to be in the twentieth cen- 
tury the theatre of grand events, perhaps of future 
Actiums and Traf algars. In Hawaii we will have 
a Malta worthy of such a mighty arena, and the 
flames of Kilauea will be a beacon fire of Ameri- 
can liberty to the teeming millions of Asia. 



The Behring Sea negotiations have from the first 
been discreditable to diplomacy at Washington. 
The attempt to prove that the fur-seals are 
domestic animals, and the property of the United 
States when a hundred miles out in the Pacific 
Ocean was a humiliating reflection on the intel- 
ligence of both parties to the dispute, and showed 
abject and degrading subserviency to the corpora- 
tion controlling the seal monopoly. Added to 
this was the disgrace of forgery, detected, unfor- 
tunately, not at Washington, but in London, and 
indicating that, while Washington officials were 
doubtless innocent of complicity in the crime, 
the forger knew, or thought he knew, what was 
wanted. The end is that this country has to pay 
about $400,000 to England, while the seals are 
abandoned to destruction, which at least will 
have the happy effect of removing them as a cause 
of international controversv. 



The assassination of President Garfield, July 2, 
1881, by a disappointed seeker for office made that 
President the martyr of civil service reform, and 
^ave an irresistible impulse to the movement to al- 
leviate the evils of what is known as the "spoils 



320 The Land We Live In. 

system. ' ' Notwithstanding the opposition of poli- 
ticians and newspapers representing the vicious 
and ignorant element, civil service reform has 
made marvelous progress, and the principle is now 
recognized not only in appointments to the vast 
majority of non-elective offices under the National 
Government, but also in the civil service of 
States and municipalities. 



An unfortunate consequence of the vast growth 
of individual and corporate wealth, after the w^ar, 
was the widening of the division line between 
capital and labor. The depression consequent 
upon the collapse of inflated values in 1873 com- 
pelled employers to reduce expenses, and made 
harder the lot of labor, while the workingman who 
saw his wages reduced was not always willing to 
make intelligent allowance for the circumstances 
which made the reduction necessary. The spirit 
of discontent reached the point of eruption in 
1877, when railway employes throughout a large 
part of the Union abandoned their work, and 
indulged in riot and disorder. The struggle 
raged most fiercely in the city of Pittsburg, which 
was subjected for some days to the reign of a 
mob, and to perils seldom surpassed save in the 
tragic scenes of old-world barricades and revolu- 
tion. The County of Allegheny had to settle for 
damages to the amount of $2,772,349.53, of which 
|i, 600,000 went to the Pennsylvania Railroad. 
Chicago, Baltimore and Reading were also the 
scenes of severe and sanguinary conflict between 
rioters and the militia. It was estimated that 
about 100,000 workers were engaged in the strike 
in various parts of the country, 

Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois and other 
States have witnessed serious labor troubles since 
1877, and the regular army of the United States 
was employed by order of President Cleveland to 



The Land We Live In. 321 

put down unlawful interference with interstate 
commerce in 1894 ; but the general tendency of 
workingmen is to obtain redress for real or 
imaginary grievances in a law-abiding manner 
by securing the election of officials favorable to 
their interests. This is the only method of 
redress that can be tolerated in a republic. 



The great fires of Chicago in 187 1, and of Bos- 
ton in 1872, the Charleston earthquake of 1886 
md the Johnstown flood of 1889, were among the 
nost memorable of the destructive visitations! 
vhich have served signally to illustrate the 
lergy, the generosity, and the recuperative power . 
o' the American people. Chicago, with ^200,- 
CK- 0,000 of property swept away by the flames, 
la d amid the ashes the foundations of that new 
Chicago which is the inland metropolis of the 
continent, brimming with the spirit of American 
progress, and the blood in every vein bounding 
with American energy. Boston plucked profit 
from disaster by establishing her claim as the 
modern Athens in architecture as well as litera- 
ture, and Charleston learned, amid her ruins, 
that northern sympath}- was not bounded by 
Mason and Dixon's line. The South taught a 
similar lesson in return when the cry from flood- 
stricken Johnstown touched everj'^ merciful heart. 



21 



322 The Land We Live In. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

The American Republic the Most Powerful of Nations — 
Military and Naval Strength— Railways and Waterways — 
Industry and Art -Manufactures — The New South — For- 
eign and Domestic Commerce— An Age of Inve. tion— 
Americans a Nation of Readers--The Clergy — Pulpit and 
Press — Religion and Higher Education — The Currency 
Question — IvCading Candidates for the Presidency — A Sec- 
tional Contest Deplorable— What Shall the Harvest Be ? 

Thirty-two years ago the very existence of the 
American Republic was in the balance. To-day 
it is the most powerful of nations, with forty-five 
stars, representing that number of States, on its 
flag, and unequalled in population, wealth or 
resources by any other civilized land. The men 
of America are not herded away from industry to 
drill in camps and garrison, and wait for a war 
that may never come. They continue to be pro- 
ducers, but should the need arise they would be 
found as good soldiers as any in the world, and 
for fighting on American soil better than the best 
of Europe, The American navy is already for- 
midable, and becoming more formidable every 
year, and the spirit of the men who fought under 
Bainbridge, Decatur, Hull and Perry survives in 
their descendants. However great the improve- 
ments in naval machines the men on the ship 
will always be of more importance than the arma- 
ment. The American Republic has the men, and 
is fast acquiring the armament. 

The people were never so closely united as now. 
Every new railway is a muscle of iron knitting 
together the joints of the Union, and no other 
nation has a railway service equal to that of 
America. Railways span the continent from 
New York to the Golden Gate. The traveler re- 
tires to rest in the North and wakes up in the 
sunny South. And still he can journey on in his 



The Land We Live In. 323 

own country, under the American flag, day after 
day, if he wishes, toward the setting sun, un- 
vexed by custom house, and free from the inquisi- 
tion which attends the stranger in Europe, as he 
flits from one petty State to another. The great 
national policy of encouraging the extension of 
railway and water communication is grandly vin- 
dicated in the America of to-day. When the 
Nicaragua Canal shall have been completed the 
American people will have a new waterway join- 
ing the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the Re- 
public, as important to the commerce of the 
Union as the Brie Canal was fifty years ago. 

To describe the progress of the United States 
in the industries and arts would be a work re- 
quiring many volumes, including the census 
reports of 1890, and catalogues of the Centennial 
and Chicago Fairs. The Republic is not only the 
greatest of agricultural nations, but also leads 
Great Britain in manufactures. In the quality of 
our textile fabrics we are outstripping Europe, 
and the statement that cloth is imported is a 
temptation now only to ignorant purchasers. In 
the more refined arts America is also gaining 
upon the older world, and it is absurd to see 
Americans purchasing silverware, for instance, 
abroad when they can get a much finer article at 
home. The low wages and keen competition of 
Europe have a degrading effect not only upon the 
workingman, but also in some degree upon his 
product, whereas here the artist and the artisan 
are encouraged by fair compensation and com- 
fortable surroundings to do their best. The prin- 
ciple upon which American employers act — to 
give good pay for good work — is the secret of 
American success ; it is the reason why even the 
semi-barbarians are learning that American goods 
are made to wear, while those of Europe are often 
made only to sell. 

Manufactures are flourishing in the South as 



324 The Land We Live In. 

well as the North, and it is wonderful to relate 
that, while the hum of busy factories can be 
heard in nearly every city, town and village of 
the former Confederacy, the cotton crop — which 
the Southern people in i860 believed it impossible 
to produce without slave labor — has already 
reached with free labor about double the figures 
of i860. 

It is true that we do not have a large share of 
the foreign carrying trade, but it is also true that 
our merchant marine, including the vessels en- 
gaged in foreign and domestic trade and river 
and lake navigation, is second only to that of 
Great Britain. The domestic commerce of the 
United States, a free trade extending from 
Florida to Sitka, from Eastport to San Diego, is 
vastly greater than the foreign commerce of Great 
Britain. 

The age has been one of marvelous inventions 
in steam, in electricity, in the machinery which 
has made nearly every mechanic and operative an 
engineer, which is driving the horse from the 
streets and the farms, and which enables one 
factory hand* to produce as much as three pro- 
duced a generation ago. 

Submarine cables keep America in close touch 
with Europe, and even the gossip of Paris and 
London is known the same day in our cities. 
Ever3-body reads, and whereas the American of a 
generation ago took one newspaper, his son to- 
day probably takes two or three, besides weekly 
and monthly publications. Notwithstanding all 
that is said about ignorant foreign immigration 
it is certain that the growth of newspaper circula- 
tion in the past two decades has exceeded the 
growth of population. Americans are a reading 
people, and it is for every head of a family to 
see that his children have the right kind of 
reading. 



The Land We Live In. 325 

The clergy are not now the political monitors 
of the community, as when, at the time of the 
Revolution, the election sermon preached in 
Boston, and printed in pamphlet form, was 
spelled by the light of the pine-knot in the 
cabin on the Berkshire plantation, inspiring the 
rustic breast with holy zeal to deliver the Israel 
of the New World from the yoke of the English 
Sennacherib. The newspaper has taken the place 
of the pulpit as a political beacon and guide, 
and, as every denomination and congregation 
includes members of both the prominent national 
parties, it would be impossible for a clergyman 
to indulge in even a distant partisan allusion 
without offending some one of his hearers. The 
clergyman is free, like any other citizen, to in- 
dicate his preferences and express his opinions 
in regard to public affairs, but the judicious 
pastor is not prone to use that freedom indis- 
creetly. 

Although the preachers are no longer political 
leaders, there is, in the opinion of the writer, 
based upon what he has heard and read of the 
past, and observed of the present, a larger pro- 
portion of learned, talented, and eloquent men 
among the pastors who minister in the churches 
to-day, than in any generation gone by. The 
clergy are still pre-eminently the molders of 
education. The presidents and professors of 
leading universities are usually prominent in 
some evangelical sect, and this is probably owing 
to the fact that every seminary of higher knowl- 
edge is under the control of a branch of the 
Christian Church, whose influence is predomi- 
nant in the faculty, and which regards the college 
as a filial institution, with traditions intertwined 
with its own. However skeptical or indifferent 
students may be to religion, they cannot fail to 
imbibe at least an esteem for the doctrines of the 
Saviour from the teachers who impart to them 



326 The Land We Live In. 

secular lessons. The impressions thus received 
by the plastic mind of youth are not likely to be 
ever wholly effaced. The man or the divinity we 
venerate at nineteen we instinctively bow to at 
forty. 



The progress of the past thirty years has no 
doubt been due in an eminent degree to a sound 
and uniform currency. In the coming national 
election it will be decided whether that currency 
is to remain as it is — at the world's highest 
standard — or whether the mints of the United 
States are to be opened freely to the coinage of 
silver. Major William McKinley, one of the 
bravest soldiers of the Union army, and a states- 
Mian of recognized integrity and ability, is the 
candidate of the existing standard; the Hon. 
William J. Bryan, a brilliant young orator, is the 
candidate of free silver. The contest now open- 
ing is likely to be one of the most exciting the 
country has ever witnessed. Nothing could be 
more deplorable than for that contest to assume a 
sectional aspect, with West arrayed against East 
and East against West. 

Come weal, come woe, this should and will re- 
main a united country. The American nation is 
one people, and will remain one people. The 
destiny of one section is the destiny of all. 
North, East, West and South are traveling along 
a common highway toward a common future. Be 
that future one of prosperity or of calamity, all 
will share in it. Whatever the seed sown, 
whether of good or evil, all will reap the harvest, 
and it remains for all, therefore, to consider, as 
citizens of a common country, what shall the 
harvest be? 



The Land We Live In. 327 

The American People. 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

No Classes Here — All Are Workers — Enormous Growth of 
Cities — Immigration -Civic Misgovernment— The Farm- 
ing Population — Individuality and Self-reliance — Isolation 
Even in the Grave— The West -The South -The Negro — 
Little Reason to Fear for Our Country— American Rever- 
ence for Established Institutions. 

In the Old World meaning of the term there 
are no classes of society here. There is no con- 
dition of life, however low, from which a man 
may not aspire and rise to the highest honors 
and the most enviable distinction, provided that 
he has the requisite natural endowments, favor- 
able opportunities, and the ability and foresight 
to grasp them. The materials of which our 
American population is composed are various in 
origin and diverse in their ideas, their creeds, 
and their aims, but nevertheless full of vital force 
and energy, and with a less percentage of human 
weeds and refuse than any other nation on the 
globe. Nearly everybody is at work, from the 
manufacturer worth millions, to the tramp who 
earns his breakfast in the charity wood-yard. 
It is disreputable for any one in vigorous health 
and years, and even when of ample fortune, to 
be without employment, and for this reason rich 
young men frequently go through the form of 
admission to the bar, or of medical graduation, 
in order that it may not be said that they are 
unoccupied. The sons of wealth who ignore the 
industrious example of their sires are still too 
few in proportion to the multitude, and held in 
too general contempt, to more than irritate the 
social surface. The aristocracy of America is 



328 The Land We Live Ln. 

an aristocracy of workingmen — workingmen 
whose possessions are valued by the hundreds of 
thousands and millions of dollars, but still men 
who work. 



'Great cities exert an influence on public affairs 
unknown half a century ago. The enormous 
growth of municipalities may be judged from 
the fact that the net municipal expenses of New 
York City, exclusive of the city's share of the 
State debt, interest on the city's bonds, and 
money acquired for the payment of some of the 
bonds at maturity, amount to $33,000,000 annu- 
ally. On schools alone New York spends this 
year $5,900,000; Chicago, $5,500,000, and Brook- 
lyn, $2,500,000. This is the most hope-in- 
spiring item in municipal budgets. It may 
mean the salvation of the country. 



The urban population is largely composed of 
the element known as ' ' foreign. ' ' The sixteen 
millions of immigrants who have come to the 
United States since 1820, have made a deep im- 
press on the Republic. Immigrants and the de- 
scendants of immigrants have been of the greatest 
value in developing American resources and 
building up American States, and the large 
majority of citizens of recent alien origin are 
:sincerely attached to American institutions. In 
the cities, however, and especially in New York 
and Chicago, may be found a class of foreigners 
who unfortunately herd together in certain dis- 
tricts, and remain almost as alien to the Ameri- 
can language and to American institutions as 
when they first landed on our shores. Even 
these, however, are not irredeemable, and in the 
course of a generation or two their more obnox- 
ious traits will probably disappear. Freedom of 



The Land We Live In. 329 

worship and the public school have a curative 
and humanizing influence which not even the 
leprosy bred of centuries of European despotism 
and oppression can resist. I am not of those who 
view with apprehension or aversion the race of 
Christ, of David and of the Maccabees, of Disraeli 
and of Gambetta. There is no better class of 
citizens than the better class of Jews, and it would 
be a dishonorable day for our Republic should its 
gates ever be closed to the victims of religious 
intolerance, whatsoever their race or belief. 



The great cities witness almost unceasing strife 
between what may be called the political-criminal 
element on the one side, and patriotism and 
intelligence on the other side. Knaves, using 
bigotry, ignorance and intimidation as their 
weapons, manage to control municipal affairs, 
except when expelled from office for periods more 
or less brief by some sudden spasm of public 
virtue and indignation, like the revolt in the 
city of New York against the Tweed Ring a 
quarter of a century ago, and the reform victory 
in that city two years ago. 

The overthrow of Tweed, and the great upris- 
ing of 1894 in New York, and of more recent 
date in Chicago, prove that the American people, 
once fully aroused, can crush, as with the ham- 
mer of Thor, any combination of public plun- 
derers, however powerful. But why should these 
tremendous efforts be necessary? Why should 
not the latent energy which makes them possible 
be exerted in steady and uniform resistance to the 
restless enemies of pure and popular government? 



The farming population, although largely over- 
shadowed by manufacturing and commercial in- 
terests, is still the anchor of the Republic. In 



330 The Land We Live In. 

many of the States the rural vote is predominant^ 
although in the nation as a whole it is gradually 
losing ground, owing to the growth of the cities, 
the removal of restrictions on the suffrage, and. 
the partial adjustment of representation to num- 
bers. The most striking features in the character" 
of the native farmer are individuality and self- 
reliance. These qualities have been inherited 
from ancestors who were compelled by circum- 
stances to depend upon their own industry for a 
living, and their own vigilance and courage for 
defence, when the treacherous Indian lurked in 
swamps and woods, and the father attended Sun- 
day worship with a weapon by his side. The 
founders of these States were men who thought 
for themselves, or they would not have been 
exiles for the sake of conscience. Their situa- 
tion made them still more indifferent to the 
opinions and concerns of the world from which 
they were divided, while they stood aloof even 
from each other, except when common danger- 
drove them to unite for mutual protection. Their 
offspring grew up amid stern and secluded sur- 
roundings, and the thoughts and habits of the- 
parent became the second nature of the child. 
I have often imagined that in the firm, wary, 
and reserved expression on the Yankee farmer's. 
face was photographed the struggle of his pro- 
genitors two centuries ago. This wariness and, 
reserve does not, as a rule, amount to churlish- 
ness. The American, like the English cultivator, 
has felt the ameliorating influences of modern 
civilization, and while he retains his strong in- 
dividuality, his intelligence prompts him to bene- 
fit by the opportunities denied to his forefathers. 
The dwelling of the American farmer is usually 
lacking in those tasteful accessories which add 
such a charm to the cottage homes of England 
and France. Beyond the belt of suburban villas. 
one seldom sees a carefully tended flower-garden^, 



The Land We Live Ln. 331 

or an attractive vine. The yard, like the field, 
is open to the cattle, and, if there is a plot fenced 
in, it is devoted, not to roses and violets, but to 
onions or peas. The effect is dreary and unin- 
viting, even though the enclosure may be clean, 
and the milk-cans scoured to brilliancy. Again 
we see in this disregard for the beautiful the 
effect of isolation upon the native character, the 
result of hard grubbing for the bare needs of 
existence. The primitive settlers needed every 
foot of the land which they laboriously subdued, 
for some productive use ; they had neither time 
nor soil to spare for the culture of the beautiful ; 
and their descendants have inherited the ancestral 
disposition to utilize everything, and the an- 
cestral want of taste for the merely charming in 
nature. Yet there are gratifying exceptions to 
the general rule, and sometimes a housewife may 
be met who takes pride and pleasure in her 
flower-beds. No doubt it was such a wife that 
the lonesome old farmer was speaking of one 
evening, in a group by a roadside tavern, as the 
writer passed along. ' ' My wife loved flowers, ' ' 
he mournfully said, as his weary eyes seemed to 
look back into the past, "and I must go and 
plant some upon her grave. ' ' 



The spirit of independence and isolation ex- 
tends in many of the old American families even 
to the tomb. An interesting monograph might 
be written on the private graveyards in some 
parts of the East. Among the shade-trees sur- 
rounding a house on the busy street, in the 
orchard behind the farmer's barn, and again in 
the depth of the wood, a few rude, unchiseled 
headstones, perhaps nearly hidden by tangled 
brush, reveal the spot where sleep the forefathers 
of the plantation. I came across such a burying- 
ground not long ago. It was far from the traveled 



332 The Lajid We Live In. 

liighwa)', far from the haunts of living men, 
among trees and grapevines, and blueberry 
bushes. The depression in the soil indicated 
that the perishable remains had long ago 
crumbled to dust, while a large hole bur- 
rowed in the earth showed where a woodchuck 
made its home among the bones of the forgotten 
dead. With reverent hand I cleared the leaves 
from about the primitive monuments, and 
sought for some word or letter that might tell 
who they were that lay beneath the silver 
birches, in the silent New England forest. But 
the stones, erect as when set by sorrowing 
friends perhaps two hundred years ago, bore 
neither trace nor mark. There were graves 
enough for a household, and likely a household 
was there. It maybe a father who had fled from 
Old England to seek in the wilderness a place 
where he might worship God according to the 
dictates of his heart ; a Pilgrim wife and mother, 
whose gentle love mellowed and softened the 
harshness of frontier life, and sons and daugh- 
ters, cut off before the growth of commerce 
tempted the survivors to the town, or the reports 
of new and fertile territories induced them to 
abandon the rugged but not ungrateful paternal 
fields. With gentle step, so not to disturb the 
sacred stillness of the scene, I turned from the 
lonely graves, and I thought as I walked, that 
these simple tombs in the bosom of nature well 
befitted those who had dared the dangers of wild 
New England for freedom from the empty forms 
of a mitred religion. 

History can be read in secluded resting-places 
of the departed. With the accretion of wealth to 
the living more care was expended upon the 
dead, and enduring slabs of slate, with appro- 
priate engravings, took the place of the uncouth 
fragments of rock. With added riches the taste 
for display in headstones, as well as in social 






The Land We Live In. 333 

life, increased, and imported marble was occa- 
sionally used to designate the tombs of pros- 
perous descendants of the early and impov- 
erished settlers. Not infrequently all three — the 
unlettered stone of the first hundred years, the 
slate of the latter half of the last century, and 
the polished and costly marble now so common 
in the great public cemeteries — may be seen in 
one small burying-ground, bearing mute testi- 
mony to the struggles and progress of the 
occupants. 



It is a fact which bears striking testimony to 
the masterful qualities of the native American 
character that in the Western States, notwith- 
standing a vast foreign immigration, the domi- 
nant element is of the old colonial stock. The 
fortunes of the West are guided by emigrants and 
the descendants of emigrants from New England, 
the Middle and the border States, and while 
adopted citizens, nearly all of a desirable class, 
are in a majority in many parts of the West, 
most of the western men and women also, of 
national fame, can trace an American pedigree 
for several generations. There are notable excep- 
tions to this rule, but they only illustrate the rule. 
This condition is due not to any inferiority on 
the part of the immigrant population to the 
average of European nationalities — for, barring 
Russia and some southern countries we receive the 
cream of European manhood — but to American 
heredity, to the inheritance of those endowments 
which qualify for leadership in a nation of free- 
men. The western American is more aggressive 
and progressive than his eastern cousin. Just as 
the New Englander retains many of the expres- 
sions and some of the ways which have become 
obsolete in Old England, so the native settler of 
Kansas, of Iowa, of Nebraska, and even of the 



334 l^he Land We Live hi. 

nearer States of Ohio and Illinois, is more like 
the New Englander of half a century ago than 
those who have remained on the ancestral soil. 
He has the old Puritan love of learning, and 
from the humble colleges in which his more am- 
bitious children are educated go forth the Joshuas 
and the Davids of our American Israel. The total 
yearly expenses of one of those western colleges 
would hardly equal the salary of the chief of a 
great university, but presidents of the United 
States are graduated there. 

The western farmer reads and thinks, and per- 
haps in that clear western air, as he ploughs the 
sod of the prairie, and reaps the harvest on his 
rude domain, he sees farther into the future than 
his brother of the East. Right or wrong in his 
political views, he is at any rate honest in them, 
and if his convictions seem to partake sometimes 
of the fervor of the crusader, it should not be 
forgotten that the spirit of Ossawattomie Brown 
yet lives in the land which he saved for freedom ; 
it should not be forgotten that nearly every 
western homestead has its grave in the battlefields 
of the war which made us one people forever. 
Making due allowance for that good-natured rail- 
lery which is one of the spices of existence, it 
may be truthfully said that anyone who laughs in 
earnest at the West calls attention merely to his 
•own shallow conceit. Intelligent people in the 
East are studying, not ridiculing the West. 



The recuperative energy displayed by the 
Southern people has been even more wonderful 
and admirable than that exhibited by France 
after the German conquest. France was not 
denuded, as the South was denuded of all that 
represents wealth save a fertile soil and the 
resolution to rise from the ashes of the past. And 
the South has risen. I passed through North 



The Land We Live In. 335 

Carolina and Virginia just before the close of the 
war. Recently I visited the same States, and 
South Carolina and Georgia for the first time 
since the war. What a transformation ! But for 
the genial climate the busy factories would have 
recalled New England, while a keen business air 
had taken the place of that old-time lassitude 
which in ante-bellum days seemed inseparable 
from the institution of slavery. The Southern 
people have all the acuteness of the Yankee, with ' 
a genuine bonhomie which 'brightens the most 
ordinary incidents of life. New conditions have 
called into play valuable qualities which were 
torpid until touched by the wand of necessity. 
The old families no longer regard honorable toil 
with aversion or disdain ; on the contrary they are 
workers, and work is the passport to respectable 
recognition. The Southern whites are getting 
along very well with the colored people, and look 
on them as not only useful, but indispensable to 
the South. ' ' If the negroes emigrate, ' ' said a 
prominent business man of Augusta, Ga. , to the 
writer, "I want to emigrate too." And this is the 
prevailing sentiment. The negroes, also, are prov- 
ing themselves worthy of freedom, although it is 
not to be expected that the effects of three cen- 
turies of slavery could be eradicated in three 
decades of liberty. In looking out for business 
rivalry New England would do well to gaze less 
intently across the Atlantic and more toward the 
"Yadkin and the Savannah. 



There is little reason to fear for our country. 
The Union has endured the severest trials, only to 
come forth stronger than ever from every ordeal. 
Grave questions are presenting themselves for 
solution, but who can doubt that the American 
people have the brain and the vigor to solve 
them? Anarchists make no impression here. 



336 The Land We Live In. 

Notwithstanding the appeals of alien agitators, 
Americans remain true to the traditions of the 
Republic. It is in this deeply implanted rever- 
ence for established institutions that the hope for 
the future of America rests. Before it the pesti- 
lential vapor of anarchy, borne across the Atlantic 
from the squirming and steaming masses of 
Europe, disappears like a plague before a purify- 
ing flame, and, whatever may be the outcome of 
the struggle, in its various forms, now going on 
between the upper and lower orders in the mother 
continent, in the United States the foundations 
of society are likely to remain firm and unsapped. 



THE END. 



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